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LE BEAU SABEEUE. 



LE BEAU SABREUE 

V 



BY 

ANNIE THOMAS, 

AUTIIOIl OF 



“DENIS DONNE,” “PLAYED OUT,” “THAT OTHER WOMAN,” 
“THE LOVE OF A LADY,” ETC., ETC. 


A iithoriied Ed ition 



UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

8UCCESSOKS TO 

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150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 


V 


CoPvlilGHT, 1890, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 


mJOE H. BYEON WOODS, 

AND TO 

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THIS STORY 18 

DEDICATED 

WITH WARM SYMPATHY AND REGARD 


BY THE AUTHOR. 








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LE BEAU SABEEUE. 


CHAPTER I, 

A suLTEY day ! Warmth and color in 
abundance in the air, though the action is 
taking place in cold, unsympathetic, color- 
less, climateless England. 

Hearts of all sorts and conditions are 
beating high in all quarters — purely fash- 
ionable, strictly military — and mediocrely 
middle-class. For it is at the Grand Mili- 
tary Tournament at the Eoyal Agricultural 
Hall, open to all officers in the British 
army, that the story opens, and the hero of 
it, “ Le Beau Sahreur'' is introduced to the 
fiction-reading public. 

In a conspicuous position just above the 
committee and judges’ box, and close to the 
Boyal one, a beautiful woman sits sur- 
rounded by some of the smartest men in 


6 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


London. Her dress, her pose, her style, 
her form, altogether are faultless. Her 
temperature and circulation, too, are in 
perfect order, for she has the supreme art 
of arriving, instinctively, at the correct 
conditions which are most conducive to her 
own well-being, physical and social. These 
conditions she invariably fulfils herself and 
forces others to fulfil unscrupulously. She 
is, in fact, a success ! 

There is a stir throughout the great 
assemblage as the names of the men who 
are “in for the first event,” are called. 
There are eighteen or twenty of them, and 
the majority have names of note in the an- 
nals of military sports. Suddenly the stir 
grows into a great wave of excitement 
among the initiated on the announcement 
being rung out that “ at the last moment a 
man who had only just arrived — Major 
Forrester of the 1000th— has entered him- 
self for all the events — cutting lemons, tent- 
pegging, ‘ tilting at the ring,’ and ‘ heads 
and posts, — on an untried horse which he 
has hastily borrowed.” 

Down in the Committee-box where the 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 7 

umpires sat and the prizes were displayed, 
there passed a thrill of excited admiration 
as “ Major Forrester’s ” name rang out. 
A slightly stronger thrill possessed the 
graceful, supple form of the woman who 
sat near the Royal box for a moment. But 
Mrs. Ballantyne is a thorough woman of 
the world, and there is nothing but the 
most charming affectation of slight interest 
in her tones as she leans a hair’s breadth 
further back in her seat and turns her head 
slightly towards the man in attendance 
whom she is currently most desirous of 
impressing. 

“ I knew Major Forrester — slightly in 
Malta once. I think I remember he was 
rather good at tilting at the ring or tent- 
pegging or something.” 

He was a deuced sight too good at every- 
thing. He carried off everything at all the 
gymcanas when he went in for them.” 

The man whom Mrs. Ballantyne is most 
desirous of impressing at the moment is a 
young city magnate — a stock-broker — re- 
puted to be the possessor of ‘ ‘ rocks ” of mag- 
nitude. Consequently, though he speaks 


8 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


in rather stiff and surly tones, Mrs. Bal- 
lantyne’s blue eyes, with the dove's rings 
around them,’ regard him leniently — not 
to say lovingly. Her voice is so low that 
not one of her other vassals catch the gist 
of her remark when she murmurs to him. 

“You always speak so generously! It 
makes me feel sure that you can surpass the 
men you praise.” 

“Forrester’s the finest and handsomest 
fellow in the service — the pluckiest too, for 
the matter of that,” one of the neglected 
men says decidedly. “For cool dare-devilry 
and splendid soldiering I’d back him against 
all comers, no matter what branch of the 
Service the others came from.” 

The City Croesus frowns ominously. In 
spite of her effort at self-control Mrs. 
Ballanty lie’s blue eyes flash with dangerous 
delight as she listens to the tribute paid to 
the well-known gallantry of the “man she 
has known slightly in Malta.” But Mr. Bel- 
ton, the millionaire stockbroker, is useful 
to her just now. So she lowers her eye- 
lids and sets her lips firmly as she says : 

“ You are an enthusiast. Captain Lisle.” 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


9 


“ As any man would be who has had the 
luck and honor to serve with Forrester. 
You must know I was his subaltern at 
Suakim.” 

The sole reason which has made Laura 
Ballantyne cultivate Captain Lisle during 
the greater part of this London season has 
been her knowledge of this fact. But now 
she says steadily, 

“ Were you, really ? I must get you to 
come and tell me about — about — ” Her 
well- controlled voice wavers for once. 
Again her eyes flash delightedly, for 
“ Major Forrester’s ” name is called, and 
in answer to the call, a man on a wild-look- 
ing chestnut shoots like an arrow through 
the narrow entrance, and flashes past, bear- 
ing the ring on his lance. 

Again and again he carries it off, until, 
having beaten all those who have preceded 
him, he rides out to make way for those 
who are to follow. While these are making 
their efforts — striving, and failing — to beat 
his record, the attempt shall be made to 
paint his portrait in black and white. 

A man of about — what shall we say ? If 


10 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


a man is “as old as he feels,” Forrester, 
having the heart of a boy still beating in 
his breast, might have been twenty-live. 
But as he has attained his present rank of 
Major he shall be given the extra ten years 
honestly, which actually belong to him. 

Black-haired, gray-eyed, with an original- 
ly fair, pale complexion that is now slightly 
bronzed and enriched by the fierce suns 
under which he has lived and fought of late 
years, with the head of a Greek god and 
the physique of a thoroughbred athlete, 
the soldier Apollo is a man whom every 
girl must long for as a lover, every mother 
covet for her son. Broad-shouldered, nar- 
row-hipped, coming down wedge-shaped 
with clean length of limb to feet as small 
and highly arched as any one of those well- 
born Arabs who had cause to remember him 
so well, — small wonder that he has the good 
wishes for his success of all the women 
present. Small wonder, too, that, as her 
eager gaze follows his retreating figure, the 
woman who “has known him slightly in 
Malta” murmurs, half -aloud: 

“If he had ‘gone down to Camelot’ Sir 


le beau sabbeub. 


11 


Lancelot wouldn’t have been in it. What 
a fool I was to fancy that life would be 
worth living without him.” 

She relapses for a few unwary minutes 
into a fit of abstraction during which “he” 
is her theme. She rouses herself from it as 
once again his name is rung out, and once 
again he hashes in on his fidgety, unruly 
chestnut who swerves in her second stride. 
But she is wrenched round into the straight 
course again by a hand that has never 
failed to force man or beast to obey his 
will, and, to make short the story, the victor 
at all the gymcanas at Malta during his 
time is the winner of the ties in all the 
events at the Grand Military Tournament. 

“ There are still the ‘ finals,’ ” Mr. Belton 
grates out considerately. “ I can’t stand 
that fellow’s side. He swaggers on. that 
beastly weedy chestnut as if he had five 
hundred guineas under him.” 

“ That’s unpardonable, as he and the 
weedy chestnut have carried off everything 
against men who swagger on five hundred 
guineas’ worth of horse-fiesh,” Mrs. Bal- 
lantyne says sweetly, and as she speaks 


12 


LE BEAU SABRE Uli. 


Belton makes up his mind that she shall not 
have the box-seat on his drag at the next 
Coaching- Club Meet. 

“ Let her Forrester get up a scratch 
team and take her, ” the aggrieved stock- 
broker thinks malignantly. But at the 
same time he is painfully conscious that if 
Laura does console herself in the manner 
he suggests he will feel the world to be 
hollow for a time, and find that his doll 
is stuffed with saw-dust. 

Mrs. Ballantyne bends forward and throws 
all her serpent-like will-power into the 
effort she makes to attract him to look at 
her when at last Major Forrester rides twice 
around the hall amidst thunders of ap- 
plause — the victor in the finals as he had 
been in the ties. But the snake-like fascina- 
tion and the will-power will not work to- 
day. Bare-headed, surrounded by the men 
who admire him, the more because he has 
beaten them, he sits on the weedy chestnut 
and listens to the acclamations which greet 
his name every time it is pronounced when 
the prizes are awarded. 


le beau sabreub. 


13 


“ A god of beauty! ” she says to herself 
furiously when at last she realizes that she 
has failed to arrest his attention, “ and like 
a god pitiless to any human error against 
himself. Still, I’ll write to him to-night for 
he is le beau Sahreur ! ” 


14 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE MUSICAL KIDE OF THE LANCEKS. 

“ Speotaculak beauty set to perfect 
rhythm,” Mrs. Ballantyneis saying to Cap- 
tain Lisle as they both watch with joyful, 
appreciative eyes the musical ride of the 
Lancers. 

It is just after the distribution of the 
prizes which would — had the programme 
been adhered to — have closed the perform- 
ance. But the Lancers are repeating their 
“ Musical Ride ” by Royal request. 

The clever, graceful, highly-trained 
horses are dancing every bar of the swing- 
ing melody. The pennons are waving in 
exquisite time. The sight is as splendid, 
as admirably harmonious a one as the 
world can show ! These magnificent men 
and horses moving with one accord and 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


15 


perfect ease through the intricate and com- 
plicated figures of the quadrille. For one 
instant while watching them Mrs. Bal- 
lantyne forgets the hero of the day— the 
man whom she has “ known slightly in 
Malta.” The next she starts and turns 
round as she hears his voice at her side. 

“ Have you a word for an old acquaint- 
ance, .Mrs. Ballantyne ? Lisle, old fellow, 
I saw you directly I came in, that's why I 
went for everything. I felt the lucky eye 
was on me.” 

Laura has slid her slim hand into his 
’while he has been speaking, and now it 
rests there, clasped rather more closely than 
women’s hands are clasped usually by mere 
acquaintances. 

“ If you saw Captain Lisle when you 
came in, you saw me also ? ” she says, half- 
questioningly, half-assertively, “but you 
never looked at me once, not once.” Then 
she bends her head a little nearer to him, 
and asks in a whisper : “ Were you afraid 

that mine were not ‘ lucky eyes ’ that you 
refused to meet them ? ” 

He is standing erect, looking magnificent 


16 


LE BEAU SABEEUIL 


in his superb symmetry and strength, with 
his head bent down towards her, and his 
glowing gray eyes devouring every line, 
every fleeting expression, of her face. This 
woman has been dear, desperately dear to 
him ! “ Has been ! ’' “ Good God, what is 

she now ? ” he asks himself hopelessly as he 
remembers that she is married ! 

“They’re the sweetest eyes were* ever 
seen, but they’ve brought precious luck to 
me,” he mutters, and then Laura with- 
draws her hand with a sigh, and turns to 
Captain Lisle. 

“You dine with us to-night? Do add 
your persuasions to mine and induce Major 
Forrester to come with you. My husband 
will be so delighted to know you,” she adds 
frankly, turning a pleading face towards 
him. 

A scowl distorts his face and alters it 
out of all recognition for a moment. Then, 
with a quick action, he draws himself up to 
still grander heights and effaces the signs 
of passion from his face, as he says : — 

“I can’t accept your invitation for to- 
night, Mrs. Ballantyne, — I’m booked for a 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


17 

mess dinner, but if you’ll allow me I’ll call 
on you to-morrow.” 

She is disappointed bitterly, bitterly. 
Every bit of the small heart she possesses 
went out to this man years ago ! Never- 
theless, she cast him aside and left him for 
a man whom she neither hates nor loathes, 
but to whom she is supremely indifferent. 
A common case, but none the less pathetic 
for being common. The man she left has 
the power still to thrill every fibre of her 
being. The man she has married nearly 
bores her out of existence. ‘ 

“To-morrow? Certainly, and any day 
and always when it pleases you. Beau Sab- 
reur"' she whispers. Then, with instan- 
taneous change of manner, she looks at 
Captain Lisle and says : — 

“ Have my carriage called,please — T won’t 
claim your escort though it was promised. 

I know you are both longing to get rid of 
me in order that you may rake over some 
of those glorious ashes of the past.” 

Lisle gets up to do her behest in recalling 
her carriage. He is a handsome fellow, a 
little younger than Forrester, well set up, 


18 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


gallant and debonair, yellow-haired, blue- 
eyed, able to swagger with the best; but 
he is dwarfed into insignificance when con- 
trasted with the man whose subaltern he 
was at Suakim — the man with whom and 
for whom he would willingly risk his life 
any day of it. 

For two or three minutes while Lisle is 
seeking for her carriage these two are alone, 
for the other men have drifted sulkily 
away.. They are alone, but neither of them 
take advantage of the situation. She 
won’t speak, and he can’t. The precious 
moments fly, and are wasted until they feel 
it in the atmosphere that Lisle is coming 
back. Then Major Forrester says: — 

“ Why did you do it, Laura ? ” 

Her head droops. For once in her mer- 
cenary selfish life she is ashamed of the 
motive which actuated her when she mar- 
ried the rich man with whom she finds ex- 
istence one long-drawn-out scheme of weari- 
ness. 

“I was a fool, Harry! that is the only 
excuse I have to offer — and that’s a poor 


LEBEAU SABBEUB. 


19 

“ Poor indeed,” he mutters bitterly, “ not 
an impulsive fool either. You wove your 
spells with a good deal of premeditation 
and discretion. Having got m,e well out of 
the way— having sent me to rest in a Fool’s 
Paradise of reliance on you and the love 
you were so clever at portraying, you set 
about getting offseason invitations to every 
house Mr. Ballantyne frequented.” 

“ I did! — and I’m punished for my per- 
fidy, she says, with frank, engaging, mis- 
erable penitence, “my life is one long expia- 
tion of my offence. Forgive me, Harry! ” 

“ Forgive you!” The tone in which he 
‘ forgives ’ her fortunately falls on her ears 
only, or Mrs. Ballantyne would probably 
be in the Divorce Court before long. 

“You can’t dine with us to-night — call 
to-morrow, four to five,” she whispers with 
a swift return to animation. Then, almost 
in the same breath, she adds: 

“ Captain Lisle, how long you have been! 
He isn’t half a good escort for a helpless 
woman. Major Forrester ; he seems to think 
that women must wait, and that man need 
never hurry.” 


20 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


“ Have you found the time long ? ” Lisle 
asks laughingly. For the last six weeks he 
has been very openly at the feet of pretty, 
seductive Mrs. Ballantyne. But the mere 
sight of the man whose subaltern he was 
at Suakim has restored him to his honor- 
able senses. (“ The insinuating she-devil 
played him false ”) he remembers, and as 
he remembers this he forswears forever 
the friendship of Mrs. Ballantyne. For- 
swears it to a certain extent, that is. For 
example, he resolves that he will never be 
inveigled into doing chief escort duty again, 
and so giving himself away in public to the 
woman who has played fast and loose with 
the man who is his beau ideal of soldier, 
officer, and gentleman. But at the same 
time he means to hang about for protec- 
tive purposes. “ She shan’t get hold of 
him again, if I can help it,” he tells him- 
self, and something of his intention makes 
itself manifest as he says to her: 

“ Did I tell you that we are off to my 
people in Norfolk to-morrow? I shall get 
you to go down with us, Forrester, You 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


21 


remember my brother Jack, don’t you? 
He has the old place now.” 

Major Forrester remembers Lisle’s brother 
Jack vaguely, and is saying so in rather 
an absent manner when Mrs. Ballantyne 
cuts in incisively : 

“ You speak as if you were a royal 
personage : ‘ We ’ go to Norfolk to-morrow; 
or have you started a companion, guide, 
philosopher, and friend lately. Captain 
Lisle ? ” 

He sweeps his yellow moustache away 
from his laughing lips as he answers : 

“ ‘ We’ in this case means my little 
sister and myself. Nell was a schoolgirl 
in your time, Forrester, you’ll hardly re- 
member her ? She lives with Jack and his 
wife now, but Fve had her up in town for a 
month — ” 

“ And never introduced her to me ! ” 
Mrs. Ballantyne interrupts. “ What do you 
mean by treating me so shabbily ? I could 
have taken her about much better than 
you can possibly have done.” 

Captain Lisle is looking at the figure of 
a girl a few yards in front of them. His 


22 


LE BEAU 8ABREUB. 


eyes dance with delight, fun, and admira- 
tion. Every inch of that splendid lithe 
young figure is dear to him, from the rich 
crown of ruddy hair on her shapely head 
to her slender little feet. She moves like 
a young queen through the crowd, attract- 
ing the sort of attention that never insults 
or annoys a girl. Perhaps this is for- 
tunate for those who are attracted by her, 
as Captain Lisle is' near. For the girl 
whom he is watching with delighted eyes 
is the one he has not introduced to Mrs. 
Ballantyne — his comrade, confidante and 
sister Nell ! 

Mrs. Ballantyne drives off at last in a 
state of savage uncertainty. She has not 
succeeded in extracting a promise from 
Major Forrester to call on her the next 
day, not because he is not ready to render 
her his promise, but because Captain Lisle 
has interposed adroitly at every turn and 
put him (Forrester) off. As she passes out 
of sight the two men slip into a hansom 
and are driven to the Service Club, to which 
they both belong. 

They have settled down in the smoking- 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 23 

room, and are talking over that old time at 
Hasheen, where Captain Forrester “ spe- 
cially distinguished himself” (as usual) by 
obtaining the range, and in sight of the 
whole battalion picking oif several rebels 
at over a thousand yards — proving that he 
had obtained the correct distance ; vide the 
journals of the day. 

Major Forrester has an unconquerable 
aversion to speaking of what he has done 
himself, but he' glories in the pluck of his 
company, and on this theme Lisle knows 
how to draw him into eloquence. 

“ Do you remember when the attack was 
made on the zareba, how you jumped into 
the mimosa bushes and made yourself a 
target for the enemy in order that our own 
fellows might see where the firing came 
from ? Those concealed Arabs had a time 
of it then when you went for them single- 
handed, old fellow — ” 

“ Ours were splendid men ! how they 
fought, didn’t they ? ” Forrester inter- 
rupts. I loved my company — they were 
just the finest fellows a man could desire 
to command — ” 


24 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


“ And they adored yon to a man — as we 
all did,” Lisle cuts in. “ The Colonel 
made me write a report of that affair 
recommending yon for the V. C. Beastly 
shame yon didn’t get it.” 

“The poor old Colonel went to the front 
and died, and — the letters he had written 
and ordered to be written were never 
received by the anthorities, I believe,” 
Forrester is saying with a palpable assump- 
tion of indifference, — for the thonght of 
these mislaid or snppressed letters of 
recommendation for the V. C. rankles 
within him, — when a short, fiery-looking 
little man strnts into the room. 

For an instant he halts, staggered at 
the sight of these two men together — the 
conjunction is not pleasant to him. He 
had seen them together last in the thick 
of the fight at Siiakim, and the recollection 
has its stings, for, through the cloud of 
dust raised by his flying charger’s heels, a 
bullet had whizzed horribly near to his 
panic-stricken form. He remembers too 
that these men had clearly discerned 
that he was not galloping ‘ towards’ the 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 25 

enemy ! Still, remembering these and a 
few other things, he puts on a suave smile 
and prepares to smoke the pipe of peace. 

“ Glad to see you again, Forrester,” he 
says, holding out his hand. “ Warm to-day 
isn’t it. You carried off everything as 
usual at the Tour — ” he pauses abruptly, 
his outstretched hand waggling feebly in 
the air, for Major Forrester has refused to 
take it — has, in fact, drawn himself up and 
turned aside from it, as if it were a loath- 
some and offensive thing. 

The choleric-looking little man does not 
resent the insult — now ! He walks off in 
silence to the extreme end of the room, 
where he occupies himself for a few mo- 
ments in making notes of the late transac- 
tion. The two men he has left smoke in 
silence for a few minutes, then the junior 
says: — 

“ You made a mistake there, old fellow ! 
— you’ve made Heathcote your enemy for 
life. Why not have shaken hands with 
him and buried the hatchet ? ” 

“ If you saw a brother-officer running 
way from the enemy in action how would 


26 


LE BEAU 8ABBEUR. 


you feel about shaking hands with him 
afterwards ? And if you had a pretty 
strong conviction that a fellow had sup- 
pressed letters recommending you for the 
Y.C. would you feel disposed to bury the 
hatchet ? ” 

“ It was a bad day for you when the 
poor old Colonel died,” Lisle says thought- 
fully ; “ he knew you and liked you as well 
as I do, and he was about the only one of 
the seniors who did — the rest were either 
jealous of you, or disgusted with you, be- 
cause of that perniciously honest habit you 
have of saying what you think about 
them! ” 

“ I hate cowards and frauds and hum- 
bugs and hypocrites,” Forrester responds 
impulsively. 

“ My dear fellow! so do I, but I don’t go 
throwing down the glove all over the place 
as you do. It’s not pleasant but it’s deuced 
expedient, not to say necessary, to make 
to ourselves friends of the Mammon of un- 
righteousness sometimes,” Captain Lisle 
says, shrugging his shoulders. “ That old 
fellow Heathcote is one of those cautious 


LE BEAU 8ABREUB. 27 

Johnnies who never put themselves in 
false places and are sure to get on. Some 
day he’ll have a chance of giving you a 
fall, Forrester, and when he gets the chance 
— he’ll take it.” 


28 


liJ£A.U 


CHAPTER III. 

Colonel Heathcote has plenty of money, 
plenty of society, plenty of consideration 
from that section of the world in which he 
desires to be well considered. But he 
siiiFers from a paucity of that which he pines 
for above all other worldly goods, and that 
is the friendship, the regard, the admira- 
tion of women. 

They say of him that he is “ so nice and 
good-natured, you know! ” but they never 
say ‘‘ He is so plucky; or “You know what 

he did at some place or other where 

he was in active service when fighting was 
going on. In fact they regard him as a well- 
to-do, safe, tom-cat who may be allowed 
to roam over their house-tops without fear 
and without reproach. 

^ He never feels the sting of this feminine 
view which is taken of him more keenly 


LE BEAU SABBEUli. 


29 


than when he is in the presence of Major 
Forrester. For the latter, though he is not 
a man who talks, is undoubtedly a man 
who can speak out upon occasions, and 
some of the occasions on which he finds 
it relieving to speak out involve Colonel 
Heathcote in their meshes. 

The rebuff he has received from Harry 
Forrester before a man whom in his heart 
he always calls “ that beast Lisle ” has 
reduced him to the lowest depths of his 
deeply mean nature. He feels not like a 
‘ whipped hound ’ — for a hound is a noble 
animal, but like a whipped cur as he sits 
smoking and seething among the embers 
of his smouldering wrath. Fervently for a 
minute he prays for the heart of a man to 
be given him — a heart that will enable him 
to go and demand ‘ the reason why ’ For- 
rester has refused to take his hand. But 
his prayer is unavailing! He dare not do 
it, and he knows that he dare not. ‘ The 
reason why ’ might be roared out in For- 
rester’s clear resonant tones, and — ! Well! 
he (Colonel Heathcote) would rather not 
have the servants of the club hear it. 


30 


LE BE A U SABBEUB. 


Solace of some sort he must have, he 
feels, as he cringes behind the newspaper. 
To stay and dine here this night is an im- 
possibility, he feels that he can’t breathe 
the same air with those two “ good cgm- 
rades ” who like each other so well, and 
know so much about him. Like a hunted 
animal his instincts prompt him to seek 
sanctuary. The only one he can think of 
is Mrs. Ballantyne. “ I’ll call on her to- 
morrow, and tell her that that braggart 
Forrester’s to the fore again with his in- 
fernal lies about me,” he thinks, pulling 
himself into a more erect position, and 
looking redder and podgier than it is well 
for a would-be hero to look. “ Get a woman 
on my side and I shall be all right — I shall 
put that fellow down if he comes across 
her path, and he will probably, for she has 
told me that she knew him slightly at 
Malta.” 

Acting on the impulse of the moment — 
the instinct of self-preservation — he writes 
to Mrs. Ballantyne at once, proffering him- 
self as a visitor to her * on the afternoon 
of the next day. Sagaciously he refrains 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 31 

from giving her his private address, for it 
occurs to him that she may write and put 
him off! She has done so before, and 
may do it again on this occasion when he 
needs her helping hand so much! For she 
knows Forrester slightly,” and can gag 
him if she pleases, and it is so essential to 
Colonel Heathcote’s current peace of mind 
that Forrester should be gagged. 

Mrs. Ballantyne is one of those fortu- 
nate people who are seldom foiled. But 
when she receives Colonel Heathcote’s note 
announcing that he will call on her the 
following day, she almost foams under her 
keen sense of frustrated plans. If she had 
not injudiciously opened his note and read 
it aloud to her husband, there would have 
been no complication. She would simply 
have been “not at home ” to him. As it is 
however, Mr. Ballantyne insists that “ dear 
old Heathcote shall be received.” 

“ Why not ? ” he asks;“ you’ve had him 
here over and over again, and I’ve often 
wondered that you were not bored by his 
stale stories. Why not to-morrow ? Are 
you going out ?” 


32 LE BE A U SABliEUB. 

She shrugs her shoulders impatiently. 

“ I do hate to be asked what I am going 
to do to-morrow. I like to-morrow to take 
care of itself, and not to make plans for 
it.” 

“Don’t make plans,” her husband re- 
sponds affably, “ just accept and abide by 
those that Heathcote and circumstances 
have made for you.” 

She smiles, to erase a frown. But she is 
a judicious woman, and she honeys the 
accents in which she says: 

“You know that my plans are always 
subservient to yours, Tom. Of course if 
you wish me to receive Colonel Heathcote 
to-morrow I will not only do it, but I will 
write and ask him to dine with us at eight 
instead of calling on me at five and having 
what all you men find so uninteresting 
unless it is fiavored by dubious flirtation 
— a cup of tea. How do you like my 
amendment ? ” 

“ I think it is a good one, a remarkably 
good one — both for Heathcote and your- 
self,” he says drily. And lovely Laura, 
though she hashes a smile of understanding 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


33 


and sympathy upon her liege lord, is aware 
all the time that he is watching her closely, 
and the knowledge causes her to grind the 
teeth of her soul in futile rage. 

“ At five perhaps you will be ready to 
go for a drive with me ? ” he suggests 
pleasantly, and at the words the smile 
fades from Laura’s face. At five she ex- 
pects Major Forrester. Though he has not 
promised to come, she knows that he will 
do so, for the old charm can’t have lost all 
its influence over him. Having rid herself 
of the Heathcote by the polite stroke of 
inviting him to dinner, instead of enduring 
him at afternoon tea, she is now con- 
fronted by a far more serious difficulty — 
namely, that of disposing of her husband to 
the satisfaction of all parties concerned. 
The sense of injustice which has suddenly 
sprung up in her soul weakens her hand : 
it seems to her more than mean and 
cowardly that Mr. Ballantyne, to whom she 
has always been agreeable and concilia- 
tory, should suddenly, without provocation, 
thwart her in this dearest desire of her 
heart ! 


3 


34 


LE BEAU SABEEUB, 


In such a natural desire, too, jas this : 
to have a quarter of an hour’s quiet con- 
versation with the man who had been 
her acknowledged, betrothed lover once in 
those old joyous days of freedom when 
still the power of choice was hers ! What 
a choice she had made eventually, and how 
her “choice” was turning and rending her 
now by his rightful and just intervention ! 
It comes over her to feel as she sits and 
looks at him, while in a perfectly justifi- 
able way he is arranging away her happi- 
ness for the morrow, that he is a tyrant ! 
Yet she had never thought him one before ! 
Now the mere idea that he is a tyrant in 
destroying her unexplained secret plans 
colors all his actions in her eyes. She is 
sure that he is furtively watching for those 
signs of agitation which she is conscious of 
betraying ! She longs for the courage to 
assert her right to freedom of action on the 
following as on all the past days. But 
the knowledge that she wants to use this 
freedom for the purpose of forging fresh 
chains round Major Forrester fetters her 
speech. All she can say in reply to her 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


35 


husband’s question: “At five to-morrow 
perhaps you will be ready to go for a drive 
with me ? ” is : — 

“ Exactly as you please, Tom, but, as I 
said just now, I detest making plans for 
to-morrow. I like to-morrow to take care 
of itself.” 

It is perhaps well for the sake of har- 
mony that Captain Lisle is announced at 
this moment, and that dinner claims the 
attention and consideration of the trio till 
such time as Mrs. Ballantyne’s nerves and 
temper are in prudent working order again. 

, For a time there is nothing said about 
the man who is occupying the place of 
honor in the thoughts both of Mrs. Ballan- 
tyne and Captain Lisle. The latter has 
alniost vowed to set a seal on his lips 
concerning Harry Forrester before the 
woman whom he (Lisle) believes to have 
been the bane of his friend’s early life. 
But Laura has the art of getting her way 
in most things, and her ears are tingling 
now with suppressed impatience to hear 
his name and listen to those extracts from 
the roll of glory in which that name is 


36 LE BEAU SABREUR. 

enshrined, and which she knows Lisle can’t 
resist the fascination of waving out 
whenever he gets a chance. 

So when dinner and several glasses of 
good wine have softened and mellowed Mr. 
Ballantyne’s temper and judgment, Laura 
says : 

“ I’ve not had time to tell Mr. Ballan- 
tyne anything about the Military Tourna- 
ment yet ; you tell him. Captain Lisle, you 
will do it better than I can, as I’m not up 
in the correct phraseology.” 

“I’ll reserve my description till we go 
to the billiard room,” Lisle replies; “it 
would be rather a bore to you to hear 
the battle fought o’er again so soon after 
witnessing it. I know how easily you are 
bored, so I’ll spare you.” 

“Thanks for your consideration. Captain 
Lisle,” She speaks with more temper than 
judgment, and her husband finds it neces- 
sary to recall her to her sense of the con- 
venances of society by glaring at her mild- 
ly. It is the expression which she dislikes 
of all others to see on his face, and she re- 
plies to it with asperity : 


LB BEAU SABREUn. 37 

“What is it, Tom ? What have I said 
to call forth that look of reprobation ? ’’ 

“ Oh, nothing! ” he answers in a tone 
which tells her plainly that the subject 
will be thrashed out between them by-and- 
by, when they are alone. 

She rises to leave them immediately 
after this, — her eyes of most unholy blue 
flashing ominously at Captain Lisle as she 
passes him at the door. 

“Jealousy is the last quality I should 
have attributed to you — before to-night,” 
she mutters, and she is not soothed by his 
low, laughing reply. 

“ I’m iealous for him, I admit, not of 
him.” 

She bites her lips and goes on to her 
deftly-shaded room, which is full of volupt- 
uous beauty and perfume, and sits among 
her flowers — the fairest of them all 1 

“Will he come to-morrow? Or will 
Lisle set himself against me and stop him 
— for his sister’s sake ! ” The last thought 
is an “inspiration” she feels. From this 
moment Lisle and Lisle’s sister take high 


38 


LE EEAV SABBEun. 


rank among the hated ones in Laura Bal- 
lantyne’s heart. 

Meanwhile Mr. Ballantyne and Captain 
Lisle are having a quiet smoke in the 
library; billiards have no attraction for 
them. Quietly, and without the faintest 
shadow of suspicion, Mr. Ballantyne has 
drawn the history of the doings at the 
Military Tournament from his guest. 
When Captain Lisle has finished his narra- 
tion his host says: — 

“ I hope you will introduce your friend 
to us if you have an opportunity. I shall 
be glad to see him here. I think I have 
heard my wife mention him — she knew 
him slightly in Malta ? ” 

“Possibly!” Lisle says curtly, and the 
men smoke in silence for several minutes. 

Swinging into Captain Lisle’s sitting- 
room in his bachelor lodgings the next 
morning, in full expectation of finding his 
friend alone. Major Forrester finds himself 
confronted by a lithe, laughing, ruddy - 
haired girl who springs from her seat and 
comes straight at him with out- stretched 
hands. 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


39 


“ You’re my brother’s friend Forrester,” 
she cries out heartily ; “he has just gone 
out to wire to Jack that we’re all going down 
to-day. Don’t you remember me, Major 
Forrester ? ” she adds, with sudden chagrin, 
as he, still holding her hands, looks at her 
speechlessly. 

“ I can’t say that I ,do,” he says hesi- 
tatingly, “ but Lisle told me his sister was 
with him, so I suppose you are — ” 

“ Nell — at your service,” she says 
dropping his hands and sweeping him a 
little courtesy, “how funny, how mortify- 
ing that you shouldn’t remember me though, 
because I remember you so well. Have 
you forgotten the chestnut mare. Carrots, 
and the way I came off her on the off side 
one day when I was galloping her bare- 
backed in the paddock, and you came in 
and blew your horn and frightened her? ” 

He has a vague recollection of having 
once caused a straggling-limbed, red- 
headed, freckled-faced child to topple igno- 
miniously off the bare-back of a chestnut 
mare ; but he can’t for the life of him 
identify her with this young Venus who is 


40 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


taking him on trust so flatteringly. He 
would like to tell her that her image, and 
the painful thought of the disaster which 
had befallen her through his agency has 
ever been present in his mind; but he is 
not good at either mendacity or hypocrisy, 
so he contents himself with saying: 

“ I’ve lived a rough life since the days 
I was at Hindringham, and forgotten many 
things that I ought to remember. Among 
others the incident of which you tell me 
you were the heroine. I’ll promise not to 
blow my horn inopportunely again, if you’ll 
promise to let me ride with you now ? ” 

“ Why, of course I’ll ride with you — 
every day and all day long — but not on a 
bare-backed horse, you understand ? ” she 
adds with a sudden laugh. “ Not that I 
have any prejudices, but Nina — she’s 
Jack’s wife — is very fastidious about what 
her belongings do and say. She’d be very 
angry with Sydney and me — and you, if 
she could only know that Syd got me 
here this morning on purpose to meet you 
and coax you to come down to Hindring- 
ham with us.” 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


41 


“ I’m only too ready to., go, I don’t 
require much coaxing,” he is saying, in 
blissful forgetfulness of Laura Ballantyne 
when Captain Lisle comes in, and the sight 
of him recalls that fair vision to his (For- 
rester’s) mind. 

“ You were dining at the Ballantynes’ 
last night. Did Mrs. Ballantyne say she 
expected me to call to-day ? ” he asks. 

“ Mrs. Ballantyne never by any chance 
mentions one of her genuine expectations 
or hopes,” Lisle answers bitterly and 
injudiciously, for this vein of dislike to 
Laura which runs through his speech 
arouses that spirit of staunchness in Major 
Forrester which is so detrimental to him 
— so imprudent and so entirely and unself- 
ishly noble. 

“ Perhaps she , didn’t regard my mute 
reception of her invitation as a promise to 
call, but of course I meant it as such : and 
must fulfil my promise. Anxious as 1 am 
to be with you all and to see Hindringham 
again. I’m afraid I can’t go down with you 
to-day. Miss Lisle, but I’ll run down by an 
early train to-morrow.” 


42 


LE BEAU SABEEUB. 


“ That will do just as well,” Nell says 
candidly, but her brother scowls at the 
comrade who is his beau ideal of gentleman 
and soldier as he murmurs, under cover of 
Nell’s demonstrations of friendship towards 
the landlady’s cat: 

“ If you put yourself into that woman’s 
clutches you’ll never get out of them, 
Forrester ! And she’ll give you away any 
day to benefit herself.” 

“ I must risk that,” Forrester says coolly, 
but his heart is hot within him, as he real- 
izes for the first time that he is standing 
between the two fires of the old love and 
the new. 


LEBEAU SABMEUB. 


43 


CHAPTER IV. 

“He either fears his fate to much 
Or his deserts are small 
Who dares not put it to the touch 
And win or lose it all.” 

The result of Captain Lisle’s imprudent 
intervention, and of Major Forrester’s 
relapse into a strong fit of loyalty and 
staunchness is, that the brother and sister 
go down to Hindringham alone, and the 
Beau Sahreur calls on Mrs. Ballantyne at 
four o’clock ! 

She is prepared: for the contingency of 
his coming earlier than the time she had 
named, and is waiting, ready dressed, for 
her drive with her husband, as Major 
Forrester swings into the room. “ Time 
rolls backward in his flight ” — home and 
husband do not exist for her — happiness ! 
only happiness ! fills her whole being as 
she sees him again, almost unaltered, the 


44 


LE BEAU SABBEUn, 


gallant soldier-lover whom she won and 
cheated and threw away ! 

If he wants revenge he has it this 
minute, as she fights with herself to conceal 
the joy his presence gives her — and fails ! 

“ You are good ! I know Captain Lisle 
tried to get you to go down to Norfolk 
with them to-day,” she begins impetu- 
ously, — “ you are good to have thought of 
me — and stayed.” 

He drops her hand as she speaks, and 
draws himself up and away from her, though 
every impulse of his being prompts him to 
clasp her in his arms. But the Beau Sa- 
hreur, in spite of the reputation which scan- 
dal had affixed to him of “ loving whate’er 
he looks on” and of “ taking whate’er he 
can,” has a good many old-fashioned chiv- 
alrous notions about honor and faith — and 
women ! So now, though he remembers 
vividly that he has wildly loved the woman 
in whose bewitching presence he now 
stands, and that she has reciprocated, he 
remembers also that he is in her husband’s 
house ! 

“ Could I have done less, Mrs. Ballan- 


Le beau sabueur. 


45 


tyne ? he asks. “ It was too good to find 
that you hadn’t quite forgotten me, for 
me to throw away the chance of renewing 
our acquaintanceship. Lisle tells me how 
awfully good you’ve been to him : isn’t he 
a capital fellow ? 

She lifts her slender foot half an inch 
from the fioor, and brings it down with a 
passionate pressure that is more expres- 
sive than a stamp. If Captain Lisle had 
been under her heel at the moment, she 
would have loved to grind him to powder, 
for he has intervened. She feels he has 
intervened ! 

“ Why has Lisle done it ? ” she ques- 
tions, and answers herself in the same 
breath. Not for love or even liking of her, 
of that she feels sure. Not even out of the 
friendly desire to keep her out of tempta- 
tion. No ! She feels the reason. She 
arrives at the truth with the unfailing 
intuition of a clear-sighted clever woman. 
She knows that Lisle has intervened to 
save*his friend out of a real, manly, honor- 
able regard for that friend’s welfare. 

“ I don’t think that Captain Lisle likes 


46 LE BEAU SABREUE. 

me any better than I like him,” she says 
incisively. “ Captain Lisle likes his own 
way as well as I like mine, and his way 
just at present is to set you against me. 
Why is he doing it ? ” 

“He is neither doing it, nor trying to do 
it. Even if he tried he would fail.” 

“ He will try ! ” 

Her ears are like those of a hare in their 
acuteness of hearing. Far along aAvay a 
vista of drawing-room, ante-room, and hall 
she hears her husband’s footsteps. He will 
come in immediately, and the opportunity 
of clearing herself with Harry Forrester 
will be gone forever. 

“ Stay ! ” she whispers passionately 
“ don’t go down to Norfolk. Stay and 
hear my vindication of myself. If you 
won’t do this, I shall feel I have lost your 
respect.” 

“ I will stay,” he says, and then Mr. 
Ballantyne comes in, and Laura introduces 
her old love! her one “love” to her 
husband. 

“This is my hour,” Mr. Ballantyne says 
smiling. “ I have promised my wife to 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


47 

drive with her at five. I mustn’t disap- 
point her. I am rarely able to give up any 
time to social and domestic duties during 
the day. This is one of the rare occasions 
on which I am fortunate enough to be able 
to do so.” 

Major Forrester is quite equal to the 
sudden strain made upon his endurance. 

” Having made a random call I am fortu- 
nate in having found Mrs. Ballantyne at 
home — even for five minutes,” he says 
quietly, and Mr, .Ballantyne feels ashamed 
of some unnamed suspicion which he has 
been entertaining like an angel — una- 
wares! 

It is not material to the story that 
Mr. Ballantyne’s character should be made 
manifest. Still, as a side-light, the sugges- 
tion may be thrown in that he is as good 
a man as ever walked God’s earth. He is 
deeply imbued with real religious feeling. 
He is strictly moral. In money matters 
(he has never known the want of money in 
his life) he is above suspicion. Yet withal 
he is a hard nut to crack when it comes to 
living with him, for he is so faultless iij 


48 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


conduct himself that he makes those who 
dwell within his borders appear faulty. 

Hitherto Laura has not suffered much — 
that is to say, she has never writhed under 
this quality of his. She has lived since 
her marriage a life of pleasure unleavened 
by a single real true feeling. The utter 
indifference to everything beyond the 
amusement which she can extract from 
them for the hour, which she displays to 
her intimate friends, both men and women, 
is so genuine a thing that Mr. Ballantyne 
has grown to take a kindly interest in these 
amusements. In fact he likes to see Laura 
have the lion’s share of them. Away some- 
where in the depths of his nature there is 
an unadmitted fear of and dislike to a man 
called Forrester, to whom gossip has told 
him — his wife was once engaged. Now, 
when he suddenly finds himself confronted 
by this very man without a word of prep^ 
aration, or explanation, something springs 
into his heart which has never dwelt there 
before, and that “ something,” though he 
does not know it yet, is jealousy. 

There is a distinct touch of frostiness in 


LE BEAU 8ABEEUB, 


49 

the atmosphere as he shakes hands with his 
wife s old friend. But Laura is a brave wo- 
man — with a deadly dear object to gain — 
and she determines that a thaw shall set 
in. So she crosses over to her husband’s 
side and puts her hand on his as she stoops 
towards him, and whispers : 

“Ask him to dinner, Tom? I won’t give 
up my drive with you to stay and hear 
some of his adventures ; besides it will be 
pleasanter to have him to dinner — with 
Colonel Heathcote.” 

Clearly Laura is only thinking, as usual, 
— of her current amusement : of this Mr, 
Ballantyne feels assured at once. If she 
had really desired to stay now and talk to 
Forrester instead of driving with him (her 
liege lord) he knows her plucky indepen- 
dent spirit would have prompted her to tell 
him so. As it is she merely wants Major 
Forrester to balance Heathcote at dinner ! 
Feeling convinced of this, Mr. Ballantyne 
gives the required invitation, and Forrester, 
feeling that he is a feeble fool for doing so, 
accepts it ! 

(“I had far better have gone with Lisle 
4 


50 LE BE A U SABREUR. 

and his sister”) Major Forrester tells him- 
self remorsefully that evening, as he steps 
from his hansom at the Ballantyne’s door, 
and is conscious of a figure passing through 
it in front of him that vaguely recalls the 
form of an enemy to his mind. The vision 
is too transitory to make impression upon 
him, however, and it is not till he has been 
welcomed by his host and hostess that in 
the rosily dim light of the drawing room 
he recognizes distinctly the man whose 
hand he refused yesterday at the Club 
— his well-grounded favorite aversion, 
Colonel Heathcote ! 

That there is something wrong is obvious 
to Mrs. Ballantyne in a moment, for Major 
Forrester’s head is aloft in the way she re- 
members so well when anything stirs or 
annoys him, and Colonel Heathcote bursts 
forth, too inconsequently to deceive any- 
one, into a jeremiad against some politi- 
cal action of the day. The acute woman of 
the world is not nonplussed for an instant. 
Crossing hastily to the further end of the 
long room she turns a lamp up before 
an easel on which is a recently painted 


LE BEAU 8ABREUB. 51 

portrait of herself, and calls to Major 
Forrester to come and criticise it. As 
he gazes, now at it and now at her, she 
murmurs : 

“ I will make Mr. Ballantyne understand 
that this rencontre is unpleasant to you both, 
and will ask him to spare you both further 
embarrassment by suggesting that you join 
me here directly I leave the table.” 

He looks gratefully at her -as he nods 
assent. “ Her tact was always perfect,” he 
remembers, and he is glad now that by her 
prompt exercise of the quality he will also 
be indulged in that dangerous delight, a 
tete-a-tete with her. Surely no other woman 
would have seen her way out of a grave 
social difficulty so cleverly and agreeably. 

Even as he thinks this Laura is back 
with Mr. Ballantyne and Colonel Heath- 
cote — smoothing both of them down. 

“ Tom, go over and show Major For- 
rester what you consider the defects in that 
portrait, and you. Colonel Heathcote, come 
to the conservatory with me while I make 
you a button-hole.” Then with a wonder- 
fully well- managed eye-telegram addressed 


52 LE BEAU SABREUB. 

to her nusband she makes him understand 
that there is a difficulty between their two 
guests, and that they must not be per- 
mitted to come into collision. Presently Mr. 
Ballantyne finds himself in the position of 
an ally of his wife’s former lover, and 
Colonel Heathcote is the proud possessor 
of a matchless tube-rose fastened into his 
coat by Laura’s dainty fingers. 

Two hours later Mr. Ballantyne and 
Colonel Heathcote are alone over their 
walnuts and their wine, for Major Forrester 
has received the considerate hint to join 
his hostess which she has prompted her 
husband to give. 

She sits playing at knitting a silken sock 
when he comes in and stands resting his 
elbow on the mantel-piece opposite to her. 
But her fingers tremble so that she drops 
a stitch, and with an impatient exclamation 
puts the knitting down. 

“ I bless Colonel Heathcote for being 
here, and I bless the quarrel which has been 
the means of my having this little ‘ say ’ 
alone with you,” she begins fervently. “ It’s 


LE BE A U SABREUB. 


53 


three years since you said good-bye to me. 
Do you remember that day ? ” 

He is practical and self-possessed at 
starting. The only reply she gets to her 
suggestive reminder is : 

“ I remember it very well. It was the 
hottest day in the hottest summer we’ve 
had for a quarter of a century.” 

“ Tell me what you have been doing with 
yourself during these three years ? ” she 
asks very softly. Her spirit is being sorely 
exercised by what she really believes to be 
merely a show of indifference on his part. 
Still a show of indifference on the masculine 
side while on -the feminine there is an open 
exhibition of real feeling is a trying thing 
for the woman. Laura is not one to stand 
this trial long in patience and silence, 
Even now, softly as she speaks, every 
nerve in her body is quivering with impa- 
tience. 

“Tell me what you have been doing 
with yourself during these three years ? ” 
she repeats, and then she adds entreatingly, 
“ I don’t want your service record, I know 
that by heart! I only want to know — by 


54 


LE BEAU SABBEUR, 


whom — by how many — I have been blot- 
ted out?” 

“Your own hand wiped me off the 
canvas of your life. No other woman 
would have had the power to do it.” 

“That’s a mere phrase — to put me oflf. 
Why won’t you treat me like the friend — 
like the sister I want to be to you now ?” 
she pleads plaintively. “Why won’t you 
give me your confidence ? Why won’t you 
tell me who the woman is who is making 
you indifferent to me now ?” 

“She does not exist, ” he answers, com- 
ing over to the side of her chair. “ Laura, 
you’re married to a very good fellow, and — 
I’m glad that I’ve seen you once more ! 
But I shall not come here again. It’s just 
as well not to open an old wound.” 

“You don’t care to see me again ? is that 
what you mean? Because! — because, I 
have been a fool you won’t refuse to treat 
me as a friend will you ? ” 

“ It’s absurd to speak of friendship be- 
tween us. It can’t exist ! it must grow to 
something stronger I it has grown to some- 
thing stronger already.” 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 55 

“ For the first time for three years I 
am happy again,” she whispers, and after 
that Major Forrester says no more about 
going away and never seeing her again. 

Colonel Heathcote has a light attack of 
Malta fever that evening which incapaci- 
tates him from rejoining Mrs. Ballantyne 
in the drawing-room. He tells Mr. Ballan- 
tyne that he thinks he “ had better slip 
off quietly and get to bed, as he can hardly 
hold his head up, and all his nerves are 
shaking with the .pain.” 

Unquestionably, something is making 
him shake and hang his head. Perhaps 
Major Forrester might give it another name 
than “Malta fever.” 

“ He won’t face me, he dare not put his 
fate to the touch and try to swagger into 
society in my presence,” Major Forrester 
says lightly when Mr. Ballantyne comes 
in with Colonel Heathcote’s apology for 
his abrupt departure. And they all laugh 
at the recalcitrant hero’s diplomacy, and 
little reck of the revenge which will, by the 
irony of fate, be put into his power to take 
upon the Beau Sabreur, 


56 


LE BEAU SABREUR, 


CHAPTER y. 

HALF-MEASUKES. 

A WEEK has passed since Captain Lisle 
and his sister Nell went down to Hindring- 
ham, and still Major Forrester has not 
followed them. 

For the first day or two after her return 
Nell has been frank enough to make the 
man of whom she is frequently thinking 
her theme. He has hashed like a meteor 
across her path, in the glory of the grandest 
physique she has ever seen — in the glory 
of the recently-written record of the most 
daring, plucky, and brilliant services of 
which she has ever read — and the radiancy of 
well-deserved popularity! To the majority 
of men in the service he is a hero. To the 
men in his own regiment he is an idol of 
whom they are proud as only soldiers can 
be of any officer who has rallied them from 
disaster and led them on to victory! To 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


67 


society he is a lion; none the less a lion 
because he never roars about himself! 
What wonder that the warm heart of the girl 
has been won without an effort on the part 
of the man who was ready enough to make 
efforts to win it — before he again fell into 
the clutches of Laura Ballantyne. 

But in the pernicious presence of this 
fascinating old love of his, Major Forrester 
has been letting his admiration and liking 
for Nell Lisle slide away into the limbo of 
half-forgotten things. For six days he has 
been in tolerably constant attendance on 
Mrs. Ballantyne, and, though never by 
word or action does he compromise either 
her or himself, the section of society in 
which he revolves begins to remind itself 
that he was her lover once! 

There is a rumor that he will be sent to 
Malta soon, and Laura begins playing her 
cards, cautiously in order that, if she does 
not win the game and make him her slave 
for life, no other woman shall have the 
honor of doing it. She enlarges on the 
benefit her health would derive from the 
waters of the blue Mediterranean, and ex- 


58 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


patiates in as eloquent a way as if she meant 
it on the delights of yachting in JdIuc, un- 
clouded weather. If the rumor is well- 
founded and Major Forrester is sent to 
Malta with his regiment, no one can say 
when he gets the route that Mrs. Ballan- 
tyne has not proposed going there before 
he received his orders. 

Speaking of the possibility of their part- 
ing one day, it comes to him to feel that 
he is on the brink of a precipice and that 
her hand is leading him on. 

The sharp stab of pain which he feels at 
the prospect is succeeded by a dull ache 
that warns him that he has been playing 
with fire and got severely scorched. Beauti- 
ful as she is, fascinating, clever and thrill- 
ing as she is, he knows her to be, beneath 
the fair surface, a selfish, mercenary, fickle 
creature, who will never give him a hun- 
dredth part of the devotion and self sacri- 
ficial love he is letting himself lavish on 
her. But she will tie him to her chariot - 
wheels and display him freely to other en- 
vious women as the captive of her bow and 
spear — while he is the prominent figure on 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 59 

the canvas on which this portion of their 
respective lives is being painted. As it is 
her ambition to ride the handsomest and 
best bred horse, to be followed by the most 
magnificent specimens of doghood, and to 
wear the best built habits and dresses in 
London, so it is her ambition to have this 
martial Apollo, with his unbeaten modern 
record of services in the field and successes 
in athletic sports and military tournaments, 
in attendance on her. In fact, there is a 
good deal of human nature about Mrs. Bal- 
lantyne ; and, in spite of his knowledge of 
her and her motives, the essentially human 
side of his nature is taken and held by her 
— for a time. 

Another course, too, conduces to a close 
intimacy between them besides vanity and 
love. Mrs. Ballantyne is as fearless and 
faultless a horsewoman as ever swung with 
perfect balance in the saddle ; and he on his 
barb. Beau, who carried him at Suakim, 
completely embodies the old idea of the 
Centaur, so absolutely are man and horse 
“ one.” As may be surmised he is no more 
a park rider than he is a “carpet-knight” 


60 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


To him the Row is a purgatorial and obnox- 
ious place, and Mrs. Ballantyne, though she 
likes to exhibit him as her escort, sur- 
renders to his distaste for it, and goes away 
for gallops over the turf at Richmond and 
wherever they can find a convenient bit 
of posts and rails — or from twelve to eight- 
een feet of water. 

“Beau” is not only his favorite horse, 
but his favorite friend apparently — also 
his fixed idea, and one of the strongest 
sentiments of his life. Under any and all 
circumstances he considers the beautiful 
barb’s comfort and well-being before his 
own, and the horse loves him in return 
with a love and fidelity that passes the 
love of woman. Beau follows him like a 
dog, caresses him like a child, and would 
burst every blood-vessel in his gallant little 
body rather than not answer to the heav- 
iest call made on him by the master whom 
he idolizes. In short, something of the 
Arab seems to have got into the man as 
well as the horse, so perfect a thing is the 
understanding, affection and union between 
the reckless soldier and his barb “Beau”. 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 61 

They are down among some meadows 
near the Thames one day when they see a 
short cut into the road again, over a mode- 
rately high bank with a quickset hedge on 
the top of it. It is nothing for a flyer to 
take apparently. Major Forrester leads at 
an easy pace, and, rather to his surprise, he 
finds Beau flying through space. Looking 
down he sees a deep gully from which clay 
has been quarried out, fourteen or fifteen 
feet deep and ten or twelve wide. Beau, 
with his legs laid flat to him clears it, and 
Forrester has time to hold up his whip in 
warning as he wheels round and stop Mrs. 
Ballantyne with a shout. 

“Don’t come, for God’s sake ! — I’ll come 
back,” he cries, and Laura has time to pull 
her mare on to its haunches in the very 
moment of take-off. For, though she is a 
plucky woman and would ride at anything 
he told her to go for, the instincts of a 
horsewoman teach her that the dictum of 
the Beau Sabreur is not to be disobeyed 
where riding is concerned. 

“It was a near thing that Beau and I 
didn’t go into that infernal trap of a puny 


62 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


ravine,” he says when he has described the 
jump to her. 

“ And if you had, you’d have been killed 
probably ? ” she questions. 

“ It would most likely have been a case 
of a broken back for one or both of us.” 

“ What should I have done, I wonder ? ” 
she says, then adds with fell frankness, “I 
feel now as if I should have gone after you ! 
But perhaps if the worst had come to the 
worst, I should have made the best of my 
way home. One can never answer for one- 
self, you know ! But Harry ! I am glad such 
an agonizing alternative was not offered to 
me.” 

“I’d give my life for you any day, and 
you know it,” he tells her. Before he 
can add “ that he is not worth it ! that she 
should risk her life or anything she values 
for him,” she has reined up close to him 
and is asking beseechingly. 

“ Promise me, promise me, that you 
won’t let Lisle get you down to Norfolk.' I 
guess, though you’ve never told me, that he 
set his sister on to persuade you to go, and 


LE BEAU SABREUR, 


63 

I couldn’t bear it if her persuasions carried 
the day against mine.” 

“You don’t know what you’re asking. 
I’m no saint, only a man; and I can’t stand 
— I won’t have half-measures about any- 
thing that I set my heart on. You had 
better let me go.” 

She has no direct answer to make to this. 
Laura is a woman who can be discreet and 
silent whenever it suits her purpose to be 
so, in spite of those occasional lapses into 
“ fell frankness which have been men- 
tioned. So now when Major Forrester says 
stoutly, almost savagely, that he “ will have 
no half-measures,” and that “ she had bet- 
ter let him go,” — she only says ; 

'“There were no half - measures in the 
way Beau and you went for that bank and 
the unknown quantity of ditch the other 
side of it. It was a splendid flyer. I revel 
in seeing you do things that other men 
shirk.” 

“ Any fellow equally well -mounted with 
myself would have gone for it,” he says 
carelessly. But he likes the subtle flattery 
she has infused into her words. He likes 


64 


LE BEAU SABBEUli. 


to feel that she admires his power and 
pluck as much as he admires her grace and 
charm and the face and figure that he 
thinks so beautiful ! So, though he depre- 
cates the flattery, he is amenable to all its 
subtlety, especially to that portion of it 
which touches Beau. 

Once turned loose on that broad border- 
land where Beau’s interest and sympathies 
and his own meet and unite indissolubly, 
and Major Forrester forgets for the time 
every other man, woman and beast in the 
world. 

All vanish into an atmosphere of indif- 
ference while he enlarges on the well -loved 
theme of how he first knew, loved and 
annexed Beau, the faultlessly shaped, gray, 
broad- crested barb with the Khedive’s 
mark on him ! 

That the gallant little horse responds is 
evident. 

“ One eye’s black intelligence ever that glance 

O’er it’s white rim looks back at its master askance,” 

as they trot smartly back from the green 
slopes by the river to the dry and dusty 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


65 

town. When they pull up at her door, 
Laura bends down to say good-bye to him 
till they meet at a fashionable haunt 
later on, to which she has, much against 
his will, secured him an invitation. 

“ Thank Heaven you didn’t go down into 
that horrid gulley, Harry,” she murmurs, 
“If you had ” 

“ Thank Heaven we didn’t, for Beau 
might have been hurt — ” he interrupts 
simply, and he looks at the horse as he 
says it, in a way that makes Laura feel that 
she is not the one object in life to him yet. 

When he has seen Beau groomed till his 
satin skin might serve for a looking-glass— 
when the clean legs, and long, elastic pas- 
terns, have been dry-rubbed till they glow, 
and the feet have been cleaned out of all 
possibility of the thrush entering into them. 
Major Forrester saunters into his hotel, bent 
solely on getting rid of the time between 
now and meeting Laura again. But letters 
have arrived by the later post which alter 
his views. One is from a brother officer at 
Plymouth saying briefly: 

“ Lucky you’re on leave. Heathcote’s to 
5 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


be our new colonel. Put in for Egypt; he 
won’t stay with us long, and it’s as well 
you shouldn’t meet.” 

The other is from Captain Lisle, remind- 
ing him that he is still due — an invited 
guest who has accepted the invitation at 
Hindringham. 

The defiant side of his nature turns 
uppermost, as he reads the first letter. 
Why on earth should he put in for Egypt 
for the purpose of avoiding old Heathcote ? 
Not a bit of it. He makes up his mind that 
as soon as his leave is up he will go back 
to the regiment, and do everything he can, 
short of violating his duty and service 
rules, to make Heathcote understand that 
he fears him no more than he loves him. 
The gallant colonel is physically and on 
principle averse to all those deeds of dark- 
ness which are done under the name of 
military or athletic sports for amusement. 
Feats of swordsmanship Colonel Heathcote 
loathes. In defence of his country, he has 
been heard to avow, he would use his 
sword with the best; likewise his rifie, 
carbine and other munitions of war with 


ZE BEAU SABREUB. 


67 


which cruel service Fate has burdened him. 
But some way or other he has always been 
out of the way when his country has 
needed these lusty services of his. Major 
Forrester smiles with a subtle sense of the 
humor of the thing as he pictures himself 
and Beau tent-pegging as they have done 
dozens of times before in the barrack- 
square. 

The other letter — the one from Lisle gives 
him such a pull up in his career of fren- 
zied friendship with Mrs. Ballantyne that 
he wires off at once to say : that he will be 
at Hindringham to-morrow. Having done 
this he revolts at and rounds on himself 
for being disloyal to Laura. So he goes in 
rather a moody frame of mind to his tryst 
with her this night, where Laura, who 
hates moody frames of mind, diverts herself 
exceedingly, a little by petting him in 
private, and by trying to make him publicly 
jealous of a Champagne-shouldered guards- 
man with something fabulous a year, 

“I hear that fellow Forrester is here,” 
the guardsman says to Laura, “I’d like to 
know him. They say he’s a crack swords- 


68 


Lt: BEAU SABBEUR. 


man. I go in for that kind of thing a 
little myself, you know.” 

“I know at Aldershot last year you beat 
every one in the sword- against- sword, didn’t 
you ? ” 

“ I beat the one man who tried against 
me. He was very fair, indeed, a man in the 
line, you know, a fellow called Brown. 
Naturally a cavalry man ought to take the 
cake in such a contest.” 

“ Major Forrester is in a line regiment, 
you know,” she says sweetly. “ Some day I 
may have the pleasure of seeing you try 
sword-against-sword with him; I hope I 
may ! How I hope I may.” 

“ Who’s your friend, Mrs. Ballantyne? ” 
Major Forrester asks, some five minutes 
afterwards, when Laura with a pathetic 
glance brings him to her side. 

“ Oh ! he’s a nice young man who does a 
lot of things in your line. You’ve heard 
of him of course ? He’s a crack shot and 
crack swordsman and a crack rider — Cap- 
tain Kelly — a Guardsman ! ” 

“I’ll try conclusions with him before 
long ; he’s a regular boasting young ban- 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


69 


tam-cock,” Forrester says laughingly. 
Whereat Laura smiles applaudingly, and 
avers that it is the one object of her life at 
present to see him tr}^ those conclusions 
and beat Captain Kelly at every point. 

The two men are introduced to each 
other presently by the fair being who 
aspires to be the arbitress of the destinies 
of both. Involuntarily and unconsciously 
they conceive the sort of aversion to one 
another which only sport and women can 
create between men who feel they may be 
in rivalry one day. 

The guardsman has this slight advantage 
— that he dances well — over Major For- 
rester, who does not dance at all, and Laura 
likes revolving in his arms before an 
appreciative crowd. Consequently before 
many minutes the band of the Blue Hun- 
garians clanging out the most entrancing 
waltzes of the season rouses all the dancing 
blood in Mrs. Ballantyne and Captain Kelly, 
and Forrester is left stranded in a shady 
corner in solitude to moan over the fatuous- 
ness of his action in coming here at all. 

“ She’s ready to chuck me for a human 


70 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


tee-totum,” he tells himself bitterly. Then, 
a little out of jealousy, and still more 
out of the strong aversion he has to being 
crossed or baffled in anything, he gets him- 
self away from the scene of his discomfi- 
ture abruptly, regardless of the efforts other 
people make to detain him. 

His Gladstone is soon packed, and he 
starts by an early train the next day for 
Hindringham with Beau in the horse-box 
and a perfectly mannered, pure-minded, 
evil-faced Bull -dog “Bush” surreptitiously 
concealed under his window-corner seat. 


LJ^ BEAU SABREVn. 


71 


CHAPTER YL 

NELL SAYS NOTHING. 

Hindkingham is a house in which every- 
one, from the lord-lieutenant of the county 
to the stable cat, feels thoroughly at home. 
Mr. Lisle himself has one of those expan- 
sive, easy-going natures that tide a man 
like a cork over the waves of this trouble- 
some world, and his wife is just enough in 
subjection to him to color her conduct so 
as to harmonize with his. This at least she 
does as a rule. But she has exceptional 
moods of diversity of opinion sometimes 
chiefly on the scores of conventionality and 
propriety. When these moods are upon 
her she becomes very vigilant about her 
husband’s only sister Nell, and then there 
is what Nell describes to some of her girl 
intimates as “ ructions at Hindringham.” 

Before Major Forrester has been there 


72 


m BEAU SABREUR. 


many hours he feels himself to be one of 
the family. The master of the house has 
sporting proclivities which are entirely in 
sympathy with those of his new guest. 
Mr. Jack, who has never seen Forrester 
before, is touched by the air of flattering 
deference and suppressed admiration which 
is his normal manner to every pretty 
woman he meets. Nell likes him intensely, 
and shows her liking openly. Likes him 
for the dash in his manner which is called 
swagger — likes him for the personally 
gallant things he has done. Likes him for 
what is intrinsically good in his character. 
Likes him in spite of his surface faults of 
thoughtlessness, improvidence, unreason- 
ableness when his desires are thwarted, 
impetuosity and quickly kindled temper. 
Likes him for those looks and that physique 
which neither artists nor women can ever 
behold with indifference. And last, but 
not by any means least, likes him because 
he reciprocates the liking. 

She has been well taught, in a series of 
unconsciously given lessons by her brother 
Sydney, to have and to hold sentiments of 


LB BEAU SASBEUB. 73 

admiring appreciation for the Beau Sabreur. 

To do her justice she has proved an apt 
pupil. From Syd’s generous, exhaustive 
version of it, she could write Major 
Forrester’s service record far more graph- 
ically and brilliantly than it has ever been 
written in the cut-and-dried reports of the 
military journals. But for all her power 
of hero-worshipping, she is no blind 
idolater. She does not extenuate — and 
certainly sets down naught in malice — 
when she is called upon to pronounce an 
opinion on some of those innumerable 
escapades of his which he has left like a 
trail behind him. Escapades, harmless 
enough to others, but charged with explo- 
sive matter that may sometime or other 
contribute to his own downfall, if touched 
by the hand of an enemy. Escapades, 
which, like most other things, lend them- 
selves to vastly different modes of treatment 
— which his friends laugh at, half applaud- 
ingly, even while they tremble for the ulti- 
mate result — which his foes laugh at with- 
out any applause whatever in their mirth, 
as they prognosticate with humane hearti- 


74 LF. BFA U 8ABREITR. 

ness that “ if he’s only given rope enough 
he’s hound to hang himself in the end.” 

Nell is not one of these latter, you may 
he sure. Nor, on the other hand, will she 
applaud and encourage him in those hursts 
of hot, haughty temper which have led him 
at times to take summary revenge on those 
who have roused it hy trickery, social fraud, 
or wrong. 

“ It would have been more dignified as 
well as wiser to have handed him over 
to the police instead of knocking him 
down”— she tells him, when in the simple 
belief that he had been within his rights, 
he narrates how he' has given a Welsher 
condign punishment on a local race- course. 

But though she blames for this and 
similar displays of hot-headedness and 
imprudence, she cannot in her heart do 
anything but admire and forgive the sin- 
ner whose sins are, after all, those of a 
noble nature — imperfectly tamed ! 

Mrs. Jack and her sister-in-law have 
strolled out into the cool entrance hall one 
morning, and, there standing on the top of 
the steep flight of steps leading down into 


LE BE A U SAB BEUR. 75 

the garden, Major Forrester sees them, as 
he rides up the drive. He waves a yellow 
envelope towards them, and Nell’s heart, 
which has been bounding with joy at the 
mere sight of him a moment before, goes 
down with a sad, prophetic thud. 

“ He’s got his orders to go, Nina ! I feel 
sure it’s that,” she mutters to Mrs. Jack, and 
the latter, who is always impatient to know 
every new fact concerning all with whom 
she comes in contact cries out : 

“ Come up at once. Major Forrester, and 
tell us your news.” 

He obeys her behest implicitly. Without 
pausing to consider how he is to get down 
again, he turns Beau’s head straight at the 
steps, and at a touch from his master’s 
hand the gallant little horse' climbs them 
like a cat. 

“You shouldn’t have been so silly as to 
ride up — are those your orders to go?” 
Mrs. Jack scolds and inquires in a breath, 
and he steals a look at Nell’s flushed, anx- 
ious face as he answers : 

“ Not so bad as that yet, thank God. It’s 
only a wire from one of our fellows to tell 


76 


LE BEAU SABREUll, 


me that our old Colonel retires and Heath- 
cote’s to succeed him. Where’s Sydney ? 
he will understand what I feel about this 
pleasing intelligence.” 

“Don’t you like Colonel Heathcote? and 
how are you going to get Beau down again ? ” 
Mrs. Jack asks. “If you take him through 
the house the steps at the back are just as 
bad, and the windows are all too high and 
too narrow for him to get through. It was 
wicked of you to ride him up.” 

“ You called to me to come up at once,” 
he says reproachfully. 

‘ ‘ But couldn’t you have stayed to get olf ? ’ ’ 

“ I never thought of that,” he says sim- 
P^y» “you called me and I came — I wanted 
to^tell you and Nell at once that mine 
enemy has got the upper hand of me so far 
as his being my commanding officer. Syd- 
ney always says Heathcote will have me 
on 'the hip one day ; he’ll have plenty of 
chances now.” 

He laughs loudly and merrily, and Nell 
is sorry to hear this defiant mirth. With his 
head held up, his eyes sparkling, partly 
with anger, and partly with amusement, 


LE BEAU SABREUB, 


77 


and his mouth set in its fiercest curve, 
he looks too godly and too gallant for any 
ignominious evil to overtake him. Some- 
thing of this is in Nell’s mind as she comes 
nearer, and puts her hand on Beau’s grand 
crest and hog mane, and says : 

“You’re not a boy to kick against the 
pricks, when the pricks are set in rightful 
authority over you. I’ve no doubt your 
grievance against Colonel Heathcote is more 
than half imaginary. Now, how are you 
going to get Beau down ? Gret ofi* and lead 
him.” 

“ I’ll get down as I came up,” he says, 
and as he speaks he touches Beau with the 
spurs, and the little gray barb who, in addi- 
tion to the heart of a lion and the agility 
of a cat, must have the wings of an eagle 
hidden somewhere, leaps down into the 
hard drive as lightly as a feather and gal- 
lops along to recover himself as brilliantly 
as if he had not received the slightest shock 
in landing. 

“I detest foolhardiness! If he tries to 
break his own neck and Beau’s again, I hope 
he won’t do it before me. Why Nell I 


78 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


You’re looking as red and delighted as if 
he had done something fine. No one with 
a scrap of prudence would have done it.” 

“No one with a scrap of prudence would 
be a bit like Major Forrester or do a single 
thing he does or has done under any cir- 
cumstances.” 

“ Now he’s coming back to get his reward 
for his silliness,” Mrs. Jack says, with a 
ring of laudation in her voice which she 
cannot silence. “ Don’t look so absurdly 
proud of him, Nell. Supposing he does 
it again and breaks his neck, you’ll admit 
then that I’m his best friend in telling him 
that I think such show-off tricks idiotic.” 

“It’s not show-off,” Nell says, with un- 
wonted energy, “ it is that he does whatever 
he wants to do at the moment without stop- 
ping to think. He wanted to give us the 
news' directly, so he took the quickest way 
about it.” 

“ It’s so like you to say that, Nell ! Even 
Sydney says you use the whip and spur on 
Forrester and urge him on to do mad things 
by that way you have of sympathizing ex- 
ultantly with him, and then you give him 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


79 

a food of corn at the end. Take my advice, 
Nell. Don’t fall in love with him ; if you 
do he’ll break your heart either before 
you’re married to him or after. He’s bound 
to do it. Other women will like him as 
well as you do, and Harry Forrester will 
always respond to the present woman. My 
dear child, don’t look, as if you could slay 
me. I’m a married woman, and Jack tells 
me lots of things that you never dream of. 
Sydney is as fond of Major Forrester as one 
man can be of another, but I think when 
it comes to you that even Syd will admit 
thatr your golden god has clay feet.” 

Nell turns a triumphant, laughing face to 
her sister-in-law for inspection at the end 
of this tirade. 

“ Do I look like one of those simple, 
easily-withered flowers that rapacious man 
finds, gathers, and throws away in his pas- 
sage through the wilderness?” she asks 
blithely. 

“No, you don’t!” Mrs. Jack concedes 
with affected unwillingness. “Dear Nell, 
I’m bound to grumble, and moralize and 
warn, and all the rest of it, sometimes. I 


80 


LE BEAU SAB RE UR. 


declare I wouldn’t do it,” says the frank 
little worldling, “if our faulty, fascinating 
friend would even diplomatize with those 
who have the Mammon of unrighteousness, 
though he has none of it himself. Are you 
listening ? ” 

Nell lifts herself erect from her lounging 
position on the balustrades that stretch 
out from either side of the steps. 

“ I’m not listening to you, Nina, dear. 
I’m listening for Major Forrester’s step. He 
said he was coming back directly. Do you 
think Beau’s legs got jarred ? Let us walk 
round to the stables and see.” 

Mrs. Jack is kindheartedness itself. 

“ I want to go and look at my own mare, 
come along,” she says promptly, but as 
they take their leisurely way to the stables 
the sense of responsibility fills her soul 
again, and' makes her vacillate. 

“ If you won’t take my advice and just 
pour passer le temps, and nothing more, 
Nell — if you really insist on trying to win 
him — don’t try and emulate his dare- 
devilry and fool-hardiness, even in theory. 
Such men infinitely prefer timid, womanly 


LE BEAU SABEEUB, 81 

women ! — I assure you they do, dear Nell. 
They don’t want us to do equally daring 
things with themselves. I’ve never found 
that Jack thinks the less of me because I’m 
nervous.” 

“You dear Nina ! how good of you to in- 
struct me in the art of winning the Major 
Forrester of this world.” Nell laughs hap- 
pily, for at this moment Major Forrester re- 
joins them. Mrs. Jack, finding the sun “ too 
glaring and the atmosphere too sultry,” 
goes in to the shade of her own room. Nell 
stays out on the terrace steps and uncon- 
sciously drives another nail into the coffin 
in which he is trying to bury his dead love 
for Mrs. Ballantyne, by lauding Beau’s 
latest exploit in the jumping line. 

Over and over again during the immedi- 
ately ensuing days Major Forrester is 
nearly over the brink of a declaration of 
love and an offer of marriage to the girl 
who at times treats him like a brother, 
and at other times holds aloof from him 
as if he were dangerous. She understands 
him well enough to know that if he wants 
her he will ask for her outright, in spite 


82 


LE BEAU SABUEUB. 


of that cramping lack of red, red gold from 
which he suffers. She understands equally 
well, and knows that she is as ready to mar- 
ry him on nothing but his pay, as if he had 
the wealth of the Rothschilds at command. 
Further ! she understands that he does 
want her ! Yet he does not ask for her ! 
What is the hindrance ? 

Her brother Sydney could answer this 
question if she had asked it of him, and 
he pleased ! But she does not ask Sydney, 
and if she did it would not please Sydney 
to tell all the truth. So she remains still 
in blissful ignorance of the existence of 
the fair bane of the Beau Sabreur’s life. 

Meantime Laura, remembering that 
absence makes the heart grow fonder of — 
“somebody else” as a rule, sends Major 
Forrester gentle reminders of herself in 
the shape of harmless little notes that 
might be published on the house-tops. If 
Forrester had been the happy husband of a 
hundred wives these notes might have 
fallen into the hands of every one of them 
without causing one jealous pang in a 
single wifely • breast. Nevertheless they 


LE BEAU 6ABBEUB, 


83 


were full of meaning, full of suggestions 
of rocks ahead to the man who knew the 
writer of them better than he knew himself. 

These harmless little notes have more to 
do with that deferred hope of Helen Lisle’s 
than Forrester is conscious of himself. 
They remind him of the woman who writes 
them so vividly that he cannot go and ask 
Nell to be his wife while they are burning 
holes in his various pockets. For after 
the perniciously careless habit of man he 
leaves them first on his dressing-table for 
several days until the housemaids have 
had time to master their contents. Then 
in a sudden access of caution he puts them 
into the pockets of any garment he may 
happen to be wearing, where they lie for- 
gotten and left to crumple away forlorn, 
he being too sentimental or too thoughtless 
to destroy them. 

The days go by swiftly, fraught with 
monotonous happiness to Harry Forrester 
and Nell. Captain Lisle’s* leave expires, 
and he has to rejoin his regiment, leaving 
the relations between his sister and his 
friend still unexplained. 


84 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


These are wonderful days for Nell. He 
is always by her side and openly at her 
feet, and all the women envy her her 
comely splendid lover. “It can only end 
in one way,” every one says who sees 
them together and marks his frank adora- 
tion and her gloriously honest acceptance 
of it. 

“ YouTl always be poor, Nell, buy a sew- 
ing machine now while you have a little 
money of your own and learn to knit stock- 
ings, and cut out your own dresses from 
as little cloth as possible. Poverty of 
course will have a halo thrown around it 
by the beauty and broad- shoulders of your 
companion—” Mrs. Jack pulls herself up 
in her attempt at banter, for tears have 
come into Nell’s eyes. 

“ He’s as much afraid of poverty as you 
are, Nina,” she says despondently, “ or at 
least he’s more afraid of something than I 
am, for he won’t be imprudent for once in 
his life. He’s been foolish enough to fall 
in love with me, but he won’t ask me to 
marry him. So do let me have the fever- 
ish happiness of being with him, and 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


85 


thinking that it’s as great happiness for him 
as for me without molesting me a little 
longer, dear.” 

It is a fact that there is a good deal of 
feverish happiness for both of them in this 
half- doubtful, half- certain condition of 
things between a man and a girl — provided 
it does not last to'o long ! A little of the 
effervescence of the romance is brushed of 
when it is openly bruited abroad to the 
world that any two people belong to one 
another and that any one caught straying 
on their respective preserves will be 
regarded as trespassers, and punished 
accordingly. But during the preliminary 
stage there is always the possibility of an 
interloper justifiably presuming to loiter 
on to the primrose path which is being- 
trodden by the unacknowledged lovers. 
The possibility gives the affair a zest which 
is often lacking in a hard-and-fast engage- 
ment, and makes each of them unconscious- 
ly exert themselves to retain that which 
they have won. 

The crisis comes at last and Beau — the 
beautiful barb who has become part and 


86 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


parcel of his master’s life very properly 
since those hot days of danger and the 
delights attendant on danger to such a 
nature as Forrester’s — Beau is the means 
of bringing it about. 

There is a meeting at Yapham three miles 
from Hindringham and Major Forrester 
enters his favorite for the Yapham Handi- 
cap value fifty guineas. Beau has to carry 
a penalty of seven pounds on account of 
former successes, and is to be ridden by a 
born ( but undeveloped ) Jockey in the 
person of the “ Spider” a shrewd stable- 
lad in Mr. Lisle’s employ, who Major 
Forrester has discovered — has the “ hand of 
a woman and the seat of a leech.” 

The course is nearly all ploughed — but a 
field of clover, and a drop into an awkward 
lane have to be crossed twice in the run- 
ning. The meeting is essentially a local 
one. The stand and rising ground are full 
of farmers who have heard of “the Major’s 
wonderful barb,” and who go into the 
ring and “plunge” upon Beau readily and 
fiatteringly. The Spide r is hastily getting 
himself into Major Forrester’s colors 


LE BEAU SABBEUR, 


87 


“ brown and old gold ” — when the saddling- 
bell ceases abruptly. The field — consist- 
ing of five other horses, one of whom 
“ Devilskin,” had been the favorite until 
Beau was entered — are ready to be “ away ” 
when the fiag drops, as it does in a minute, 
and they are off fifty yards ahead of Beau 
before the Spider has got his foot in the off 
stirrup. The Spider’s leech-like qualities 
come in conveniently here. Beau rushes 
after his vanishing rivals before the stirrup 
difficulty is adjusted. At the second fence 
he gains his lost ground, slips past Devil- 
skin and leads the field. He passes the 
stand the first time several lengths ahead 
of everything — Spider with his face black- 
red, his cap off, and his off stirrup still at 
variance with his foot ! As they breast 
the hill on the far side of the course in the 
last round a clever cat of a mare makes 
futile efforts to close with Beau, but when 
he hears the mare rattling behind him 
he tosses his head and bolts worse than 
ever. He crosses the road at such a rate 
that even Major Forrester starts and utters 
an exclamation feeling sure that Beau 


88 LE BEAU SABREUR, 

must charge the fence and break both 
Spider’s neck and his own. But the Spider 
has nerve and remembers his instructions. 
He sits still ! is landed into the last field 
but one safely, and Beau romps in the win- 
ner by a dozen lengths. 

If the V.C. for which he has been 
recommended, and out of which he has 
been curiously kept by some occult means, 
had been given to him this moment Major 
Forrester could not feel a more hearty 
honest thrill of pride and pleasure than he 
does in this exploit which his renowned 
little horse has accomplished. He pets 
and thanks and praises Beau as if human 
intelligence and a human heart were in the 
barb’s beautiful lithe head and superbly 
strong little body, and Nell Lisle touches 
the root of one of his deepest feelings 
sympathetically when she says : — 

“ If I see much more of Beau I shall 
love him as a brother — ” 

“You may see as much of Beau for the 
rest of his life as you like, it rests with 
you whether you have him for your own or 
not — ” he is replying, when Nell, out of 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 89 

happy nervous excitement interrupts to 
her own detriment : 

“No, no! Beau might reciprocate and 
get so fond of me that you might grow 
jealous. Own it : You couldn’t bear it to 
see Beau fond of anyone but yourself? ” 

“ Beau’s part of myself, therefore he can’t 
help being fond of you,” Major Forrester 
is saying, and the climax has nearly come, 
when Mrs. Lisle averts it. 

“ Major Forrester,” she cries running up 
with a dull yellow envelope in her hand 
“ here’s a telegram for you — sent on from 
Hindringham.” Then, half aside, she adds 
“ Nell ! you shouldn’t — you really shouldn’t 
have left us all to come and help Major 
Forrester canonize Beau. Tp hear him and 
see you one would think that Beau was a 
prodigy, and you two were its parents.” 

Before. Nell can answer Major Forrester 
cuts in to the conversation. He speaks 
very quietly, but there is not the customary 
elation in either his voice or manner when 
he says : — 

“My orders have come to join the first 


90 


BEAU SABBEUB, 


battalion at Malta at once. I must leave 
you this evening, Mrs. Lisle.” 

“ It’s too horridly sudden,” Nina says 
affably; “we .shall all be so sorry, shan’t 
we, Nell?” 

But Nell says nothing. 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


91 


CHAPTER VII. 

MRS. LINLEY CUTS TO CURE. 

Byron graphically paints some of the 
characteristics of Malta in those lines begin- 
ning : — 

“Adieu ye joys of La Yalette, 

Adieu, Sir occo, sun and sweat, 

Adieu, ye cursed streets of stairs. 

How surely he who mounts you swears I ** 

but he leaves some of its chief delights 
untouched. 

It is an earthly Paradise for that large 
section of the human race who find their 
dearest delight on earth in carrying on to 
a more or less compromising degree with 
“ other fellows’ wives” and other women’s 
husbands — or lovers, as the case may be. 
In fact if there be an Elysium, on earth for 
the married women who pine for the excite- 
ment of conquest, or the more dangerous 
triumph of winning and returning a real 
love, it is Malta, 


92 LE BEAU SABBEUB, 

Mrs. Ballantyne has carried out her pro- 
gramme to the letter. She has had a little 
fit of depression of health and spirits— a 
little contest with her doctor who has in- 
sisted on ordering her to spend some time 
in the south — and a really earnest and 
interesting discussion with her husband as 
to the most likely spot in which to autumn 
and winter. Finally she settles the ques- 
tion by suddenly remembering that an old 
friend of hers — the wife of a commander in 
the navy— is resident in Malta, while her 
husband is on the Mediterranean station. 
“ A dear, nice, good, quiet, sensible woman,” 
she tells Mr. Ballantyne, “just the sort of 
woman you would like to see me intimate 
with, Tom. I shall be quite happy in dear, 
lazy, luxurious Malta if I have her compan- 
ionship even if I have no other amusement.” 

Whether Mr. Ballantyne believes this 
admirable sentiment or not is a detail. He 
inquires the name of his wife’s friend, re- 
marks that “ it’s a good one” when she tells 
him it is “ Douglas”, and proceeds to make 
arrangements for the hire of a yacht, and 
the transmission of his wife and himself to 


LE BEAU SABliEUli. 


93 


Malta without delay. He is rather pleased, 
in fact, that Laura is so willing to leave Eno*- 
land just now. It proves to him conclu- 
sively that she has no idle sentiment hang- 
ing about her concerning Major Forrester, 
who will ( Mr. Ballantyne understands ) be 
quartered at Plymouth for some time. Be- 
fore he is undeceived on this latter point 
they are installed in a palatial residence on 
terms that appear sordidly low to the rich 
Englishman. Laura’s health begins to im- 
prove, likewise her spirits, and their yacht, 
the Banshee, is one of the first objects that 
greet Major Forrester’s eyes when he arrives 
in the harbor in the trooper Tamar, 

She has nothing to fear in writing to 
him, accordingly a letter apprising him of 
her whereabouts is put into his hands as 
soon as he lands. Mrs. Ballantyne does 
not “ give herself away ” even to him. She 
pleads her “ health ” as the reason why she 
is here at all, and dwells with charming 
frankness on the “surprise and delight” 
she felt when she saw his name in the list 
of passengers on board the Tamar, Per- 
haps he does not quite credit the implica- 


94 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


tion that her being here is a coincidence, 
nothing more ! But it is certain that there 
is much more pleasure than pain to him in 
the fact of her being so near to him — 
so attainable, so ready to render to him 
the gracious, flattering homage which the 
heart of a man can’t help enjoying from 
a woman whom he either loves, admires, 
or likes intensely. 

Mr. Ballantyne is away for a week’s 
cruise in the Banshee when Major Forrester 
in reply to her note calls on the woman 
who is already known as the prettiest in 
Malta. Shaded from the fervid heat of the 
burning, blood-heating sun, they lounge 
away the drowsy hours by a window that 
gives upon steps leading down to an orange 
grove where bloom and fruit in profusion 
are in every stage of growth from the tiny 
bud to the luxurious ripe orange. She 
leaning back in a cool deck chair that 
adapts itself to every one of her indolently 
paceful movements ! He— metaphorically 
if not physically— at her feet ! 

He dines with her, finding the quails that 
have been driven over to their destruction. 


LE BEAU SJBBEVB. 95 

by the fierce sirocco wind that blew awhile 
ago, food for the gods, because eaten in 
her presence; finding the thin wine mount- 
ing to his head in a way no potent 
draught would have done had she not been 
there; finding, in short, that to look at this 
woman by his side, to hear her low- toned 
words, to be the object of her sweet, subtle 
fiatteries is as near an approach to Heaven 
upon earth as he may ever hope or wish 
to attain unto. 

They saunter down some streets of steps 
to the Opera house after dinner, she with 
some lace arranged mantilla-fashion over 
her head, and he in the light morning- suit 
he had dressed himself in to call upon her. 
The fatiguing onus is not laid upon them 
of arranging themselves in fuller dress for 
the opera than has sufficed for that little 
dinner which they have enjoyed together. 

The simplicity of her attire enables them 
to walk — as everybody else does in this 
heavenly climate — to the entertainment 
which is as exquisitely rendered as the 
costliest of its kind would be in London, 
and their musical and spectacle-loving 


96 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


tastes are gratified at a price that would 
only command a seat in the gallery in our 
superior metropolis. 

A new singer, a Dwa who has just 
arrived with a flourish of Fame’s trumpets 
from Italy, makes her first appearance to- 
night. The Admiral and the General, 
their respective families and suites, are 
there to hear and do her homage, and all 
that is best and brightest, fastest and 
finest in Malta society bears them company. 

As Mrs. Ballantyne and her escort enter, 
the whole house pays her the same compli- 
ment it had paid the Diva ten minutes 
before. Every eye turns in her direction, 
every glass that dares to do so is leveled 
{d her for an instant, and withdrawn 
before Major Forrester has time to scowl 
defiance at the audacity. The wife of the 
colonel of one of the regiments on its way 
out to India happens to have taken up her 
quarters in a suite of rooms in the same 
palazzo as that in which Mrs. Ballantyne 
is located, so, recognizing the lady of whom 
she has already caught a glimpse, she 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


97 


bends foward and gives information to her 
husband, who is divided from her by some 
of Malta’s biggest officials in the following 
words: 

“ The Ballantynes have just come in ! 
d’ye see? He’s been yachting, and is just 
back, I suppose ? Splendid pair they are, 
are they not. Colonel Heathcote — they’re 
in the same house with me — ” 

“ Mrs. Ballantyne has just come in,” Col- 
onel Heathcote interrupts gruffiy. “The 
fellow with her is Forrester of ‘ ours.’ 
Ballantyne is a nice, quiet, gentlemanly- 
looking follow, quite a different stamp of 
fellow altogether.” 

Mrs. Linley listens to the letter of this 
explanation, and fathoms the spirit of it. 
So, as he is a superficially kind and com- 
paratively rich man, she, as the mother of a 
large family of children who are always crav- 
ing for something which she has neither 
the means nor the inclination to supply 
them with, set herself the pleasing Christian 
task of soothing him. 

“ Mrs. Ballantyne is courting destruction,” 
she says lightly. “ I have heard from many 


98 LE BEA U 8ABBEUR. 

people how staunch a friend you have been 
to that silly, giddy woman for years — ” 

“ Her father was a friend of mine — when 
I was a boy,” he adds hurriedly, fearing 
that Mrs. Linley may draw the not un- 
natural deduction that Laura’s father and 
he had been contemporaries. 

“Exactly! so I have always understood, 
therefore it must be all the more annoying 
to you to see her making herself conspic- 
uous with such a man as Major Forrester,” 
Mrs. Linley chimes in with prompt sym- 
pathy. It may be remarked in passing 
that Mrs. Linley knows absolutely nothing 
for or against Mrs. Ballantyne’s handsome 
escort, but she (Mrs. Linley) sees that he 
is an object of distaste, if not of actual 
aversion to Colonel Heathcote, accordingly 
she deems it highly probable that she will 
score in speaking of Forrester as “ such a 
man ” in disparaging accents. 

Colonel Heathcote allows the precious 
ointment of her words to heal his wounded 
vanity. He looks approvingly at Mrs. Lin- 
ley for the first time this evening, and 
resolves that he will“ drop in the following 


LE BEAXT SABUEUR, 99 

day and see those nice children of hers.” 
As he thinks this he says : 

“To do Mrs. Ballantyne justice she is 
quite innocent of encouraging Major For- 
rester’s attentions. I know her so well 
that I can answer for it that she would 
infinitely prefer being without him to hav- 
ing him by her side.” 

Colonel Heathcote has chosen an unfor- 
tunate moment for making this assertion. 
Mrs. Linley darts a comprehensive gleam 
at the pair under discussion, and sees Mrs. 
Ballantyne looking up into the face of the 
man who is bending over her with that look 
which a woman is not apt to bestow upon 
one who bores her and whom she desires 
to see depart from her borders. The desire 
to punish old Heathcote for his fatuous 
preference for Laura to herself seizes Mrs. 
Linley and causes her to say with acidity: 

“ If she would prefer being without him, 
she has a wonderfully contrary way of 
showing her wishes. She is either a nasty, 
shallow, vain coquette, or she’s over head- 
and-ears in love with your handsome Major.” 

“ Oh ! you do her injustice, indeed you 


100 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


do,” Colonel Heathcote protests vigorously. 
He cannot bear to hear it affirmed that any 
woman — much less Laura — is over head- 
and-ears in love with* any man but himself. 

“ I can assure you,” he goes on earnestly, 
“ that Mrs. Ballantyne is quite a model wife, 
devoted to that good fellow Ballantyne — ” 

“ So I should suppose,” Mrs. Linley in- 
terposes dryly. 

“ Quite deyoted to him. Ballantyne’s a 
great friend of mine, by the way ; a most 
excellent fellow. Mrs. Ballantyne is far too 
clever a woman to be led away by the 
superficial attractions of a fellow like For- 
rester.” 

“Oh! I don’t know about that!” Mrs. 
Linley says, shaking her head slowly in 
grave, well-balanced deliberation. “ I don’t 
know about that. The cleverest women 
have hearts and fancies and eyes, and Major 
Forrester must appeal to all three. How 
proud you must all be of him in your regi- 
ment,” she goes on, determined to give it 
to him well for his “ idiotic infatuation ” for 
the brilliant woman opposite, who has never 
given one glance at him or to anyone else. 


LEBEAU SABBEUB, . 101 

save Major Forrester, from the moment she 
entered th^ house. 

“ I don’t think our pride in him over- 
balances our judgment,” Colonel Heathcote 
says; “it strikes me that the regiment 
would get on quite as well without him as 
with him. He’s an extravagant fellow with 
out the means to justify extravagance — ” 
“One doesn’t measure such a man’s do- 
ings with an inch-rule,” Mrs. Linley smiles 
tentatively. “ Come, Colonel Heathcote ! 
search your memory and tell me the truth ? 
— Weren’t you a little bit extravagant in 
the days of your youth ? ” 

“ If I was, I had the parental power of 
the purse at my back,” Colonel Heathcote 
grunts, and Mrs. Linley lays the last straw 
upon him by saying softly : 

“ Poor fellow ! and hasn’t he ? I am so 
sorry to hear it. He looks like a duke 
with twenty thousand a year at least.” 

“ He has to duke it on his pay and the 
twenty thousand devils by whom he’s pos- 
sessed,” Colonel Heathcote growls in ex- 
treme exasperation. “ Women are all alike, 
I find ; self-sufficiency, a few social sins 


102 LE BEAU SABREUn, 

and swagger are sure to win their suffrages.” 

“ I can be alliterative too,” the lady 
laughs, “ in Major Forrester’s case I think 
it’s beauty, broad shoulders, brains, and 
breeding that win our suffrages ! Why the 
opera’s over ! Hasn’t it been a delightful 
one. I have enjoyed it so much. Come 
and see me to-morrow. My children will be 
so delighted to see their old Portsmouth 
friend again.” 

I’ll come, certainly, with pleasure,” 
Colonel Heathcote promises grimly. But 
to himself he adds : 

“ Not one pound of nougat shall that 
wretched woman’s children get out of me. 
What the devil took Mrs. Ballantyne out 
in such a hurr}^ ? That fellow must have 
been afraid that she’d want to stay and 
speak to me.” 

Before many more days are over their 
heads. Major Forrester’s reputation for suc- 
cess in all things in which he cares to be 
successful has increased and strengthened. 
Beau has won the first prize at the races, 
and his two Polo ponies are not only un- 
equaled in their special profession, but are 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 103 

the most perfect tandem pair on the Island, 
“or any where else” Forrester himself rather 
broadly declares. The seniors in the regi- 
ment shake their heads ominously as the 
smart turn-out concentrates the attention 
of all the Beauty, Fashion and Valor in 
Malta upon itself day after day. But though 
heads are shaken, nothing occurs to justify 
the despondent gesture. The three ponies 
win more at races, shows, and gymcanas in 
the course of a month than is sufficient to 
keep them in- high condition for twelve. 
There is an armed neutrality between their 
master and the Colonel, and Bush has not 
bitten a native Maltese yet — a catastrophe 
Colonel Heathcote prays for daily, in order 
that he may have a valid excuse for dismiss- 
ing a dog from the Barracks who makes life 
a burden to him whenever they meet on 
parade. 

Not that Bush has ever snapped or even 
growled at the Chief. But the brindle bull- 
dog has the same unhappy faculty for ex- 
pressing dislikes as characterizes his master. 
He (Bush) walks more stiffiy, and the nor- 
mal expression of proper pride in himself. 


104 tn BKAXr SABBEVn. 

tempered with piety, intensifies itself on his 
face whenever he meets Colonel Heathcote. 
“ That beast and I will have a clear under- 
standing soon, the Colonel promises him- 
self one day when Rush has stalked past 
him with a peculiarly insulting glance. 
“His infernal ponies and confoirnded horn 
are bad enough, dashing over every thing 
and maddening you with its noise. But 
this brute of a wild-beast is worst of all with 
his beastly insolent jowl and bloated broad 
back. I wish he’d bite a native that I 
might make an end of him. However, my 
fine fellow, we’ll try conclusions soon ! ” he 
adds threateningly to Rush, who is calmly 
obstructing the entrance to the mess-room, 
looking very much as if he thought it might 
be well to dispute the Colonel’s entrance 
into it. 

Major Forrester is in the mess-room, smok- 
ing a cherished little common clay pipe on 
which he cut the word “ Suakim ” when the 
work was at its warmest there one day, 
and he was making himself a target for the 
hidden Arabs’ fire, in order that they might 
betray the place of their concealment. 
This pipe is almost as irritating a spectacle 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 


105 


as its owner or Rush to Colonel Heathcote, 
who unadvisedly throws down the glove 
by saying: 

“ Keep that brute of a bull -dog of yours 
in your own quarters, Major Forrester. 
He’s obstructing the entrance. He snarled 
at me as I came in.” 

Major Forrester takes his little pipe delib- 
erately out of his mouth, empties it, puts 
it into its case with* dainty solicitude, and 
then says, as if he had only just remem- 
bered that his Colonel has addressed him: — 

“ Snarled at you, did he ? I’ve never 
known Rush snarl at a gentleman.” 

The four or five other men who are in 
the room lounge out with as unconscious 
an air as they can command. If a row is 
imminent they have no desire to be pres- 
ent at it. For a few minutes the two men 
sit alone looking at each other. Then Col- 
onel Heathcote reminds himself that to 
have a mess-room row with a junior will be 
infra dig. So he makes his exit through 
another door than the one Rush is decorat- 
ing, and Harry Forrester’s longing to have 
it out with his unavowed foe is baffled for 
a time. 


106 


LE BEAU SABEEUB, 


CHAPTER YIII. 

NO HEEO — BUT — A DOG! 

The day is a heavenly one. The sky 
and the sea are rivalling one another in 
depth of blueness and perfect placidity. 
Antonio — Mrs. Ballantyne’s Italian - Mal- 
tese Groom of the Chamber, Master of the 
Privy Purse, and incomparable chef — all 
rolled into one in his brown, lean, lithe, 
bright-eyed body, has concluded his day’s 
marketing, and is arranging fresh flowers 
that are too sweet for earth in his mistress’ 
“ salon”. The task is a congenial one to 
the color-loving child of the sun. The 
bombolas, from which depend thick masses 
of fragile-fronded maiden-hair ferns, hang- 
ing in a row in the balcony windows, may 
be sufficient for cool English eyes, but 
Tonio loves to group his thick passion- 
fraught whites and flame-colored reds 
together in the great sparsely-furnished 


LE BEAU SABEEUB. 


107 


salon of this marble palace of which Mrs. 
Ballantyne is temporarily queen. 

It is still early in the day, but Mrs. 
Ballantyne has retained her English habit 
of loving fresh air and exercise. She is out 
already, strolling about the heights above 
La Yalette, and wondering what the day 
will bring her in the way of diversion. 
Will it bring Mr. Ballantyne and the Ban- 
shee back, or will it bring Major Forrester 
and his tandem ? 

While she is thinking these thoughts, 
and ’Tonio is still grouping his dead whites 
and burning reds, a visitor is ushered 
into the salon by Mrs. Ballantyne’s new 
French maid. As Melani neither speaks 
nor understands English, and. Colonel 
Heathcote’s French is so pure that no 
mere earthly being can understand it, there 
has been a difficulty at the entrance door. 
Finally Colonel Heathcote has solved this 
by pushing past the suave smiling French 
woman, and gaining the temple of his idol 
just as ’Tonio is leaving it. The latter, 
believing the good old Englishman to be 
the grandfather at least of the idol, plants 


108 LE be a U SABEEUli, 

him in a draught, offers him fruit and iced 
water, and leaves him with the smil- 
ing assurance that “ Madame will come 
home — ” eventually he expresses with a 
shrug of his narrow high shoulders that 
covers up his ears for a moment. 

For at least twenty minutes Colonel 
Heathcote is alone in this outer-temple of 
his divinity, free to look into the books 
she is reading, to touch the embroidery she 
has been handling, ( he is rather disgusted 
to see the initials H. F. on a cigarette case 
which comes under his observation as he 
is rooting over the pretty litter on a little 
table which stands by Laura’s pet chair,) 
and smell the flowers whose odors her 
delicate little nose will presently inhale. 

As he is availing himself of this freedom, 
he hears a swinging light step, the sound 
of which is abhorrent to him, approaching 
the salon from an ante-room, and without 
due consideration the Colonel slips inside 
^portiere and up a flight of marble steps 
that will land him ( he believes ) in a room 
from which he can walk on to a balcony, 
from thence descend into a garden, and so 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 109 

make his exit without colliding with his 
hete noire. Major Forrester. 

In his haste Colonel Heathcote forgets 
his hat and stick. Both are strikingly 
en evidence when presently Major Forrester 
swings into the room, Rush at his heels 
and the pleasant anticipation of finding 
Laura here expectant of him in his heart. 

“ Out, by Jove, is she ! ” he sings out in 
response to Tonio’s urbane explanation 
“ I’ll wait for five minutes,” he goes on, 
where upon ’Tonio gives him a stale Times 
an Illustrated London News, full of portraits 
that would almost do to publish as novel- 
ties again, they are so old, and a society 
paper with a pleasant little paragraph in it 
concerning his own and his ponies, suc- 
cesses at the gymcanas and races. 

As he finishes reading this he is attracted 
by Rush’s manner. The brindled bull-dog, 
after having sniffed at every corner of the 
long salon, has planted himself at the foot 
of the flight of marble steps which lead up 
to Mrs. Ballantyne’s chamber, portiere 
has been roughly brushed aside, and Rush 
and his master have a full view of the 


110 LE beau sabbeub. 

vista of steps. As Major Forrester looks 
up towards this vista his eyes light upon 
a well-known hat and stick, and, with a 
laugh in which there is more fun than 
malice, he springs up and advances to 
encourage his already vigilant dog. 

The sympathy between this man and his 
beast is beautiful in its entirety and com- 
pleteness. At a word and a touch from his 
master Rush lies down with a pious expres- 
sion of resolve not to budge from the foot 
of those stairs till the receipt of further 
orders, which commands respect. Colonel 
Heathcote, peeping round a graceful curve 
of those marble steps, catches sight of this 
expression on Rush’s honest, ugly face, 
and is so impressed by it that he hastily 
retreats into the only chamber to which 
these stairs give access and there bewails 
his miserable condition. 

For a few moments Major Forrester waits 
and whistles gayly in the salon below. 
Then with a parting injunction to Rush to 
stay where he is, and not to move on peril 
of a whacking from a certain courbash of 
which he already wots, the Beau Sabreur 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


Ill 


goes out to pick up his tandem which is 
waiting, and, if possible, to intercept Mrs. 
Ballantyne and take her for a drive. 

Virtue is rewarded. At her very gates 
he meets the lady of whom he is in search. 
The idea of a tandem drive pleases her, and 
she has no one else near whose pleasure 
need be consulted. 

“ Take me to Sleema,” she says, “I want 
to see the little church there. And after 
that — oh ! drive me where you like. Tom 
is coming home to-night, I think, but he 
won’t mind my being out if I am enjoying 
myself. I did ask Colonel Heathcote to 
look in this morning, but you say you’ve 
been in ? Did you see him ? ” 

With touching gravity and emphasis Ma- 
jor Forrester assures Mrs. Ballantyne that 
in all the wild marble waste of her airy 
salon he has not seen Colonel Heathcote. 

“Poor old thing ! He hasn’t come yet, so 
I needn’t wait for him ; Harry, what dear 
ponies these are ! I shall enjoy being driven 
behind them by you intensely.” 

She steps swiftly into the dogcart as she 
speaks, and the tandem skims off, curiously 


112 


LE BEAU SABBEUli. 


regarded by Colonel Heathcote from the 
vantage ground of that chamber at the top 
of the flight of marble steps into which he 
has so unwittingly penetrated. 

The poor old Colonel is not here of his 
own free will any longer. Twice he has 
essayed the downward passage of those 
steps, and twice the aspect of Major For- 
rester’s four-footed representative has re- 
pelled him. The air is sultry. The Japa- 
nese mat at the foot of the stairs conduces 
to slumber in its white springiness ; but 
Eush, scorning the idea of slumber when he 
has been told off to watch, sits in a wide- 
awake attitude upon it with his under-jaw 
well pointed towards the flight of stairs. 
His soft, snaky, black-velvet eyes are half 
closed, but all his dear doggie intelligence 
is awake, and will remain so until his mas- 
ter relieves him. 

For a while Colonel Heathcote, though he 
regrets the foolish impulse which brought 
him there, does not And the situation un- 
bearable. His conscience is clear ! He is 
in “ my lady’s chamber ” most innocently. 
Not for the world (for he is a gentleman) 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 113 

would he penetrate into one of its sweet 
mysteries. Her toilet table is covered with 
Venetian glass and every variety of cos- 
metic that a blooming blonde can require, 
but he looks into none of them. Indeed he 
scarcely moves a step from the top of that 
flight of stairs down which he is most 
honorably desirous to descend before any- 
one becomes aware of his compromising 
position. 

“ Why didn’t the fellow take his brute of 
a dog with him ? ” he asks himself over and 
over again, and not even echo answers him. 
One hour passes and then driven to despera- 
tion he takes his courage in both hands, 
and descends a few steps in a fearless and 
unconcerned manner that does not even 
deceive himself. 

Far less does it deceive Kush. Rising 
slowly and stiffly that admirably vigilant 
dog puts himself into a rigid position, and 
lifts his sagacious countenance frankly up 
for Colonel Heathcote’s free inspection.. The 
sight from the point of view of a bull -dog 
lover and connoisseur is an interesting and 
pleasing one. The white teeth in the signi- 


114 : le beau sabbeum. 

ficantly protruded, remarkably firm under- 
jaw are distinctly visible, so is the ominous 
flash of steel in each expressive eye. Col- 
onel Heathcote is neither a dog lover nor a 
connoisseur in that noble animal. Rush’s 
personal appearance is intensely interest- 
ing at this moment, but it is not by any 
means “ pleasing” to him. 

“ Still,” he argues, “the dog must know 
me well, he’ll certainly let me pass,” so he 
jauntily descends a few steps further, when 
his progress is rudely arrested by an ag- 
gressive movement of Rush, for which he is 
not prepared. With an agile bound that is 
startling in a dog of his bulk. Rush hurls 
himself half-way up the stairs, uttering a 
growl that speaks volumes of hydrophobic 
terrors to Colonel Heathcote. As the latter 
incontinently retreats into his harbor of 
refuge and bangs the door behind him, Rush 
recovers his normal affability, and trots 
down wagging his tail and contorting his 
body with delight after the manner of a 
fat eel. 

Twice or thrice when his head is cau- 
tiously protruded an inch or two beyond 


LE BEAU 8ABREUR, 


115 


the door, does his fainting spirit revive 
at the possibility of relief. ’Tonio makes 
little missions for himself into the salon 
with more flowers, with baskets of fruit, 
with visitors’ cards. But Rush takes no 
notice of ’Tonio, and to Colonel Heathcote’s 
disgust makes no attempt to get out of the 
room, though ’Tonio leaves the salon door 
open. 

It is getting late. The burning heat of 
the day is over, and gay Malta is beginning to 
go out for its drives and rides. “ Where 
on earth can that woman have been all 
day ? ” he asks of space angrily. He calls 
her “ that woman” now in his rage and 
bewilderment, though Mrs. Ballantyne has 
certainly had nothing to do with his current 
difficulty. He remembers, too, that he 
has guests at Mess this night, important 
service guests, the General in Command of 
the troops bound for India, and the Admi- 
ral, and other personages. He remembers 
the days of his youth, and his unspotted 
private character, and he nearly weeps as 
he reflects that it is now well within the 
bounds of possibility that he may fall a 


116 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


victim to rabies brought on by the uncalled 
for enmity of a worse than “mad” — a 
thoroughly “bad” dog. faultless as he 
is, too, in this particular instance, what 
capital will be made by his enemies — and 
even so good a man as Colonel Heathcote 
has enemies ! — of the dubious situation in 
which he will come to his untimely end. 
Why was he weak enough ever to go out 
without his revolver in this accursed island! 
If only he had it now. Major Forrester’s 
infernal pet should soon meet with its just 
deserts. 

By-and-by, after several more ineffect- 
ual sorties upon the stairs and repulses 
from Kush, about half an hour before that 
mess-dinner at which, alas! he will not pre- 
side to-night. Colonel Heathcote hears a 
slight commotion below that betokens the 
arrival of someone. In another instant he 
hears Mr. Ballantyne’s hearty voice enquir- 
ing of ’Tonio where his mistress is. ’Tonio’s 
explanation is too low- toned to reach Col- 
onel Heathcote’ s ears, but he strains these 
latter intently to catch the next words Mr. 
Ballantyne utters — which are: 


LE BEAU SABBEUit. 


117 


“ Whose dog is that ? ” 

“ It is the Major’s.” 

“ Oh! Forrester’s to be sure,” Mr. Ballan- 
tyne says aloud to himself. Then he asks 
of ’Tonio: “ What the devil the dog does 
there without his master ? ” 

’Tonio has but one explanation to offer 
— a shrug of the shoulders, and this is an 
explanation that naturally irritates an Eng- 
lishman. 

“ Turn the brute out,” Mr. Ballantyne 
orders, and ’Tonio — who is something of 
a fatalist — advances to do his master’s 
behest. As he does so, Kush rises and 
advances just one little step, with a sad, 
set purpose in his eyes and growl that 
causes ’Tonio to bound backwards with 
electric velocity. 

“ Why, the brute is guarding the stairs,” 
Mr. Ballantyne shouts angrily. “ Who’s 
up in that room ? Go and see.” 

It is all very well to tell ’Tonio to “go 
and see,” but Rush is a Cerberus on whom 
the most succulent of sops would be wasted. 
It is in vain that Mr. Ballantyne and ’Tonio 
offer him choice viands. He looks with 


118 LE BEAT! SABREUR. 

loving eyes askance at the bones, but he 
will not move an inch to take them. 

This pretty play goes on for a period 
that seems interminable to the agonized 
man in the room above. He has let the 
golden moment of easy explanation pass — 
the moment of Mr. Ballantyne’s arrival, 
and now he would almost as soon face 
Rush as face the husband of the lady on 
whom he has como to call in all old-gentle- 
manly innocence, and who will probably 
never forgive him for having blundered so 
miserably. 

His guests are arriving about this time, 
and that fiend Forrester will be having it 
all his own way at the table, telling stories 
to his (Colonel Heathcote’s) discredit, and 
“ gassing” about himself and his ponies in 
a wa that makes Colonel Heathcote’s few 
spare locks curl with righteous wrath, as 
he reflects that in all these stories the most 
obnoxious element is truth ! 

Meantime Mr. Ballantyne makes ’Tonio’s 
life a burden to him. The unfortunate Mal- 
tese is driven at the point of the moral 
sword into Rush’s very jaws several times ; 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


119 


and, though Rush magnanimously refrains 
from biting a person whom he feels has noth- 
ing whatever to do with the case, still 
he frightens ’Tonio terribly. The dog-fiend 
will not permit anyone to pass up or down 
those stairs, and, as Mr. Ballantyne has a 
certain conviction that there is “ someone ” 
in that room above the situation is no more 
agreeable for him than it is for ’Tonio or 
Colonel Heathcote. 

Only Rush is happy in the proud con- 
sciousness that he is doing his duty 
doughtily. His animus deepens against Col- 
onel Heathcote with every passing minute, 
for he feels that Colonel Heathcote is the 
unworthy cause of his (Rush’s) prolonged 
watch, and of his enforced disregard of the 
tempting odoriferous bones which are offered 
him at brief intervals in an ingratiating 
manner, alternately by Mr. Ballantyne and 
Tonio. His body grows more rigid, his 
eyes more snaky, and his under -jaw more 
pronounced as his hunger increases, and 
when Colonel Heathcote snatches a hasty 
glance at his enemy, in the forlorn hope that 
that enemy is tired out and has departed, he 


120 


LE BEAU SABBEUtt. 


the Colonel is considerably annoyed to 
find that Rush has ensconced himself in a 
niche midway up the stairs, out of reach of 
a revolver which is held in the hand of an 
irascible gentleman who is half hidden by 
the portiere, and whom Colonel Heathcote 
rightly surmises to be Mr. Ballantyne. 

“ If I could only get Ballantyne to listen 
calmly while I explained the whole miser- 
ably absurd circumstances, it would be all 
right in a minute,” the harassed gentleman 
thinks. But, unfortunately, he does not see 
his way to getting Mr. Ballantyne to lend 
him his (Mr. Ballantyne’s) ear. Accordingly 
the explanation which would free him from 
suspicion and reproach is not given. Rush 
and Mr. Ballantyne, though opposed to one 
another on some points, are at one in this 
determination, that the person in the upper 
chamber, whoever it may be, shall not escape 
undetected. ’Tonio keeps out of the salon 
as much as possible, but he is occasionally 
ordered in by his irate master and com- 
manded to “ turn that brute of a dog out.” 
’Tonio receives these commands with a saint- 
like smile that promises obedience. But 


LE BEAU SABUEUR, 121 

somehow the promise is not kept, and Rush 
is still ready for a tid-bit from the Col- 
oners plump person when Mrs. Ballantyne 
comes home. 


122 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


CHAPTER IX. 

MRS. BALLANTYNE IS PROPHETIC. 

Laura has had a delightful day. Its 
pleasing influences are upon her visibly, 
as she glides into the room and gives her 
husband a glad greeting. 

“I’m so glad you and ih.e Banshee are 
back,” she commences. “ I want to get up 
a water-picnic to-morrow, and you’ll help 
me to do it beautifully. I’ve been out driv- 
ing tandem with Major Forrester nearly all 
day and I have enjoyed — why, Tom ! What’s 
the matter?” 

“ Been out with Major Forrester all day ! ” 
he says, greatly relieved, but inflnitely more 
puzzled than before, “ then what’s the mean- 
ing of that?” he points to Rush who has 
come to see how things are going on, and 
who is now standing with his hind legs on 
the bottom stair, wagging his tail effu- 


LE BE A U SABREUE. 


123 


sively, “ and who is in durance vile in your 
bedroom?” 

Laura is unfeignedly perplexed. 

“ It must be ’Tonio or Melani,poor things! 
and that wretch of a dog won’t let them 
come down. Really, Major Forrester 
shouldn’t have left his dog — ” 

“ Major Forrester did perfectly right to 
leave his dog in charge if he suspected an,y- 
thing,” Mr. Ballantyne says, “’Tonio and 
Melani are as much in the dark as we are. 
It must be one of those confounded natives 
who has heard something about your 
diamonds and pearls. I’ll have the door 
broken open and let the dog in.” 

Mr. Ballantyne thunders out the announce- 
ment of this intention in tones that pene- 
trate even into Colonel Heathcote’s fastness. 
There is nothing further to be gained by 
modest reticence the latter feels. The mess- 
dinner must be in full swing by this time. 
His guests and brother officers must be giv- 
ing him up altogether, speculating probably, 
as to whether he has been knifed after 
the playful habit of the aggrieved native, 
or has fallen into the heinous social sin of 


124 


LE BEAU SABBEUB, 


having forgotten the invitations he has 
given. Weak and weary from having passed 
through a very fiery furnace of physical fear 
and mental mortification, he opens the door 
an inch or two and calls out as clearly as 
he can : — 

“ Ballantyne, my dear fellow! do come 
up and let me explain matters, I assure 
you—” 

But before he can give the assurance 
Kush has hurled himself at the door against 
which he now stands growling hideously. 

“ It’s Colonel Heathcote,” Laura says 
aghast. “ What can haye taken him there ? 
Poor old man ! Do get him down, Tom.” 

But this is more easily said than done. 
Tom is quite as willing to release and get 
rid of his old friend as Laura is, but Kush 
is not in sympathy with them. 

“ The brute of a dog likes you, why don’t 
you call him off?” Mr. Ballantyne asks, 
not unreasonably, of his wife, and forthwith 
Laura seeks to justify her claim to Kush’s 
regard. 

Every appetizing biscuit and bone that 
can be offered to a dog, every enaearing 


LE BEAU' SABEEUB. 


125 


epithet that feminine eloquence, informed 
by affection, can lavish upon a canine friend, 
are offered and lavished by Laura to Eush. 
But Rush is above bribery and corruption. 
He smiles at Mrs. Ballantyne, and wags his 
tail at her until she tries to pull him from 
his post. Then he gives a long, low, rum- 
bling growl that makes Laura precipitately 
quit her hold of his collar, and leave Col- 
onel Heathcote to his fate. ' 

“We had better send for Forrester,” 
Mr. Ballantyne says at last. So they send 
for him, but the answer comes back that 
“Major Forrester is dining at Mess, and 
cannot leave his guests.” There is a rider 
to this message to the effect that they can 
“ turn Eush out when they like as he is 
sure to find his way back to quarters.” 

Later on, when the Mess dinner is 
pleasantly over. Major Forrester makes 
his way to the Palazzo in which his friends 
the Ballantynes are residing, and there 
greatly to his surprise ( of course ) he 
finds his Colonel — whose “ absence has 
beenmuch regretted at Mess,” he carelessly 
observes — in durance vile. Rush is a lamb 


12Q le beau sabbeue. 

in an instant, and when Colonel Heathcote 
looking rather decrepid after his long 
incarceration and fast, comes down into 
the salon that inscrutable dog gambols 
round his (Colonel Heathcote’s) legs in a 
way that justifies Major Forrester’s reply 
to all complaints : 

“ Why on earth didn’t you come down? 
He only wanted to pla}^ with yon. Eush is 
awfully fond of a game, aren’t you, old 
man ? ” 

“ Does the brute generally snarl when 
he wants to play ? ” Colonel Heathcote 
asks testily. He sees that the Ballantynes 
are laughing at him, and now that it is too 
late, he knows that he would rather have 
incurred Mr. Ballantyne’s wrath than be 
the object of their commiseration, so he 
inquires testily, 

“ Does the brute generally snarl when he 
wants to play ? It’s all very well to pass 
the matter off lightly, but the affair might 
have had a very serious termination. If 
your beastly dog had bitten me ever so 
slightly — ” 

“ He’d have chawed you up, he wouldn’t 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


127 


have been satisfied with a slight bite if 
he’d ‘gone for you ’ at all,” Major Forrester 
cuts in with a refreshingly keen appre- 
ciation of the humor of the situation. 

Then he pulls himself together, for Laura 
looks annoyed, and adds — 

“It was rather hard on the Colonel to be 
‘ booted ’ up into an asylum he didn’t want 
to seek, by Eush, while we were having 
that jolly drive wasn’t it, Mrs. Ballantyne ? 
The General’s in a devil of a rage at 
your not turning up after inviting him,” he 
adds kindly, “and by the way there’s a 
rumor of disaffection amongst the 'y^^^g 
troops in dock.” 

Colonel Heathcote sends the General 
and the young troops in dock, to that 
bourn from which no one returneth, and 
after a strained leave-taking with his 
unwitting host, he, the unwelcome guest, 
departs, leaving Major Forrester in posses- 
sion of the position. 

For some time after this little episode 
Major Forrester finds himself more in 
social request than ever, for the story is a 
good one and loses nothing in the telling.- 


128 LE BEAU SABBEUR. 

Rush, too is much courted and admired, to 
his own perplexed surprise ; for he is 
unconscious of having done anything deserv- 
ing of greater honor than has hitherto 
been heaped on him. But that this popu- 
larity is dearly purchased those who read 
as they run prognosticate, when they see 
the expression of Colonel Heathcote’s face 
whenever he is playfully rallied on the sub- 
ject of having been surrounded and besieged 
by Rush. 

About this time there is a considerable 
decrease in the kindly affection with which 
Colonel Heathcote has hitherto regarded 
Mrs. Ballantyne. The diminution of his 
regard may be traced to two causes. One 
is that he has a vivid remembrance of the 
smile she flashed across to Major Forrester 
when the latter relieved Rush’s guard, and 
freed Colonel Heathcote. The other is the 
profound appreciation Mrs. Linley devel- 
opes for and manifests towards him. 

There is balm in Gilead still for him 
when a sensible, straightforward woman, 
with “no nonsense about her,” prefers his 
society to that of the man about whom 


LE BEAU SABBEUE. 129 

nearly every woman in Malta is making 
a fool of herself. But though there is halm 
in this condition of things, it is not of 
sufficient quality to heal his wounds. It 
is very well to be permitted to escort 
Mrs. Linley to all the public festivals 
and amusements, and to promenade the 
“ streets of stairs ” with her when she is 
on shopping bent. But he is still conscious 
of a smarting sensation when he hears 
that while he has been thus engaged, 
Mrs. Ballantyne has been riding or driv- 
ing with Major Forrester, in blissful dis- 
regard of his (Colonel Heathcote’s) pro- 
longed abstension from that palazzo in 
which he on one occasion made himself so 
very much at home. 

There are drawbacks also to the bliss of 
escorting Mrs. Linley when she is on shop- 
ping bent. She is a good woman and an 
excellent mother, and she never makes 
inroads upon her liege lord’s purse if she 
can help it. In fact she is a crown of glory 
to her husband, for she makes a better 
appearance on their rather straitened means 
than does any other service woman of whom 
9 


130 LE BEAU SABBEUB. 

they wot. She has no false pride about her, 
and so, when she pathetically laments her 
inability to give her darling Amy or her 
precious Bell some article of necessity or 
luxury for which their respective young 
souls pine, she is not above allowing Col- 
onel Heathcote to come to her aid with his 
well-filled purse and generous impulses. 

The Linleys’ name is legion, but if all 
the daughters live to be a hundred they 
will be able to envelope themselves all the 
time in Maltese lace, so cleverly and remu- 
neratively does mamma pour balm into 
Colonel Heathcote’s gaping wounds. He is 
highly privileged, he feels, when Mrs. Lin- 
ley tells him that ‘^nothing would induce 
her to allow Major Forrester to either ride 
or drive with her.” As she has never so 
much as ascended into a saddle in her life, 
and looks upon an arrangement in harness 
of one horse in front of another as an in- 
vention of the evil one, there is perhaps 
less lofty morality and self-denial in this 
renunciation — or refusal rather — of the 
Beau Sabreur’s society than may appear at 
first sight. 


LE BEAU 8ABBEUR. 


131 


“ I’d give you a penny for your thoughts, 
only they’re always about Belle and Beauty 
when you’re driving them,” Mrs. Ballan- 
tyne says abruptly one day as they are 
spinning along behind the pony tandem, 
and silence has obtained for at least ten 
minutes. 

“Give me the penny, and my thoughts 
shall be at your disposal. They were not 
with the ponies.” 

“Do you like anything on earth as well 
as you do those ponies, Harry ? ” 

“ Yes — one thing very much better.” 

“ I ought not to ask you what that one 
thing is,” she says very softly, and he 
replies with what strikes her as brutal 
veracity : 

“ There’s no reason why you shouldn’t 
—I was thinking of Miss Lisle.” 

“Miss Lisle is rather a good-looking girl, 
isn’t she?” 

“ Bather ! ” 

He says this one word in a heartfelt way 
that makes Mrs. Ballantyne wish she had 
avoided the topic. 

“ Wha-t were you thinking about her ? ” 


132 


LB BEAU SABBBUB, 


“ I was wishing she could be here to- 
morrow to see Beau in the hurdle-race.” 

“Why don’t you say what you mean? 
I’ll say it for you. You wish she could be 
here to-morrow to see you ride Beau, and 
for you to see her ! Am I not right ?” 

“ About right ! ” he says smiling ten- 
derly at the recollection of Nell’s last 
lingering, loving look at him. 

“Is Miss Lisle destined for some Norfolk 
Squire of high degree and doomed to live a 
bucolic life ? ” 

“Not that I’m aware of,” 

“ Then why didn’t you bring her out 
with you as you wish for her so much.” 

“ I thought of doing it, but hadn’t time.” 
“ You speak very confidently, are you 
sure she would have come ? ” 

“ That’s exactly what I hadn’t time to 
find out,” he says, bending down his head 
towards her in order to make himself heard. 

“ In the old days you never needed time 
when you desired to find out anything of 
that sort. Age has tamed you a little, I’m 
afraid, Harry. Take my advice, don’t hesi- 
tate any longer ! If you want Miss Lisle, 


LE BBAir SABREUB. 


133 


ask for her at once. Why should you wait ? 
She’s well dowered, I suppose ? ” 

“ Indeed I don’t know whether she has 
a penny or not.” 

“ Then you’re very silly not to find out 
before you commit yourself irrevocably. If 
she hasn’t a penny you have so few that 
you’re bound to renounce her. Probably 
she’s always beautifully dressed now, and 
well mounted ; no one appreciates beautiful 
dresses and good horses more than you 
do. Unfortunately, Mrs. Harry Forrester, 
unless she brings the wherewithal with her, 
will have to indulge in last year’s fashions, 
and go without her hundred guinea hunter.” 

“ If I had her I shouldn’t care whether 
she was dressed in the fashion of the year 
One or not, and I’d go without the ponies 
to give her a hunter.” 

“No, you wouldn’t,” his friend laughs. 
“ You would always he intending to do it, 
and winning her gratitude by offering to 
do it. But — she would persuade you to 
accept the sacrifice of her pleasure at her 
hands, and you’d be touched by Love’s offer- 
ing and — accept it.” 


134 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

It is a day full of great excitement, a day 
full of burning events. In addition to the 
races there is to be a tandem show and 
among those entered is Major Forrester’s. 

His ponies are in splendid condition, 
full of beans and pluck, but he is a little 
“ below the mark ” he feels, as he struggles 
with the earliest symptoms of that de- 
pressing malaria known as “ Malta fever.” 
Nevertheless, when the saddling bell rings, 
he throws oif a light overcoat and stands 
revealed in his own racing colors. 

He is, as usual, with Mrs. Ballantyne, 
but his attention is wandering from her, a 
good deal to her chagrin. Presently, as he 
leaves three of her remarks unanswered, 
she asks : 

“What is it, Harry? Are you ill, or 
only ill-humored ? ” 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


135 


“Both.” 

“ Then why ride ? I thought you meant 
to put a light-weight on Beau to-day. 

“ If I had he’d have been handicapped 
heavily. Macpherson has entered that cob 
of his, and thrown everything out of gear.” 

Macpherson is a naval man, madly desirous 
of gaining the reputation of being a horsey 
one. He rides pluckily, ungracefully and 
unskilfully, but his cob has speed and 
strength sufficient to make it a formidable 
rival to “ Beau.” The two men have a slight 
acquaintance with and an intense dislike to 
each other. It has happened that they have 
been pitted against one another at various 
boat-races, rifle and cricket matches and 
athletic sports in different quarters of the 
globe, and now that they have collided on 
the Malta race -course the dislike intensi- 
fies itself. 

“ I wish you weren’t going to ride your- 
self ; please don’t,” Mrs. Ballantyne pleads 
prophetically, but her pleading is of no avail 
to-day. Major Forrester goes off without 
answering her appeal, and presently, rather 
to her dismay, she sees him at the starting 


136 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


point next to his bete noire — Lieutenant 
Macpherson. 

“If the other four ponies had been be- 
tween them it would have been more satis- 
factory,’,’ she says, pointing out the two men 
to her husband, and his reply after scan- 
ning them through the field -glass does not 
tend to reassure her : 

“ Forrester looks black and red with rage 
already. What’s the mischief? Do you 
know ? ” 

“He doesn’t like his neighbor — ” 

“And apparently Macpherson is saying 
something that annoys our friend,” Mr. 
Ballantyne says laughingly. But Laura’s 
sympathetic soul foretells breakers ahead. 

The flag is dropped, and the six ponies 
are off, Beau carrying his master as if he 
were a feather instead of the fourteen stone 
he is. The gallant little gray steals away 
from the others— from all but the brilliant 
bay cob who is his most dangerous rival, 
and who keeps neck and neck, stride by 
stride with Major Forrester’s favorite. There 
are only a few moments now between them 
and victory and— the “ Beau,” who has been 


LB BBAV SABBBim. 


137 


lying off a few lengths hehindthe cob, mak- 
ing a final effort, comes with a rush — The 
“Beau wins” is shouted from hundreds of 
tongues as Major Forrester lifts the gray 
barb past — 

No ! not past the winning-post ! At the 
very moment, as it seems, of victory the 
rider of the bay cob, finding he cannot win 
in any other way, suddenly pulls his horse 
so as to cross the “ Beau” and then by pre- 
venting his passing, just succeeds in getting 
first past the post. 

Again the spirit of prophecy descends 
from Mrs. Ballantyne as she witnesses this 
episode. 

“ There will be murder, Tom. Go and 
get him, bring him here, don’t let him 
have a quarrel with that man,” she urges 
vehemently. 

“ I should be delighted to obey your 
behest, my dear, but I might as well try 
to stop a mountain torrent as endeavor to 
check any little ebullition of wrath on the 
part of Major Forrester at the present mo- 
ment. 

Voices raised in assertion, in denial, in 


138 


LE BEAU SABUEUU. 


accusation, in defence, in fury, fall upon 
their ears. There is a difference of opinion 
not only between Major Forrester and Mr. 
Macpherson, but between the many who 
have plunged on Beau, and the judges who 
have declared the bay cob to be the winner. 
Some few boldly affirm that the bad riding 
which cut the gray barb out of it was no 
mere accident. Others hesitate to say this, 
but declare that “ the thing has an ugly 
look.” Major Forrester makes no bones 
about it at all. He feels very strongly, and 
he speaks as he feels. 

As soon as he has unsaddled he walks up 
to Mr. Macpherson, who has not received a 
single congratulation on his victory, and 
hurls a goodly portion of pungent idiom- 
atic English at the victor’s head. The gist 
of these remarks is to the effect that Mr. 
Macpherson has ridden foul with an un- 
gentlemanly purpose and the accusation is 
made for all men to hear, in Major For- 
rester’s most resonant tones. 

It is in vain that Macpherson indignantly 
repudiates the accusation, in vain that he 
entreats his infuriated rival “to hear rea- 


LEBEAU SABREUB. 139 

son.” With the fever burning in his veins, 
with his whole soul in arms against each 
and every one who opposes his views and 
seeks to get him to moderate his state- 
ments, the Bean Sahreur lashes himself into 
fiercer fury with every hot, unguarded word 
he utters. 

That his tandem, driven by himself, takes 
the first prize presently is no alleviation to 
his outraged spirit. Before night every 
one who knows the two men says that, 
“ It’s a good thing Macpherson sails to- 
morrow in the trooper,” for Forrester Has 
promised a variety of things to Mr. Mac- 
pherson in his rage, and he has a way of 
keeping such promises with a vengeance. 

“ I would rather Beau had beaten my cob 
fifty times than that this should have hap- 
pened,” Macpherson says truthfully enough 
to some of their mutual friends. “He’s such 
an impetuous fellow he won’t listen to rea- 
son. He’ll fix a quarrel on me for this, and 
I’m as innocent • as you are of having rid- 
den foul.” 

The one whom he is specially addressing 
is Colonel Heathcote, who has smiled at 


140 


LE BEAU SABREUli. 


Beau’s defeat, smiled for the first time since 
the expiration of his term of imprisoment 
in Mrs. Ballantyne’s chamber. 

“ I wouldn’t trouble my head about it if 
I were you,” he says scornfully ; “ we all 
know what he is. Directly the credit of 
that pony of his is touched, his hand is 
against every man.” 

“ I wish he would hear my explanation, 
I’m sorry there should be bad blood between 
us,” Macpherson says temperately. But, 
unfortunately, he does not speak so tem- 
perately when he meets the Bean Sahreui\ 

Brooding over the wrong, whether real 
or imaginary, which has been done to his 
pony. Major Forrester goes to bed that night 
with the fever in complete possession of his 
system. Wild night-marish dreams crowd 
his brain, and fatigue him more in his slum- 
bers than any amount of wakefulness would 
do. Over and over again he goes through 
the race that he had so nearly won. Over 
and over again that fatal lurch from the bay 
cob drags him to the ground with a force 
that seems to hurt him, physically unreal 
as it is. It is almost a relief to him that 


LE BEAU SABliEUR. 


141 


he is summoned : — the young troops are in 
open mutiny in dock, and the Colonel is 
away on the other side of the Island, where 
he has been dining with some friends. 

It all passes like a dream. He is to the 
fore at once, as he always has been and 
always will be at the delicious call of duty 
and danger. Swinging down upon them, 
backed up only by a sergeant and. a few 
privates, he has gathered together in his 
hurried exit from his quarters, the Beau 
Sabrewr justifies the appellation which has 
been bestowed upon him in the eyes of 
the disaffected youths. The grand manli- 
ness of the man asserts itself over insub- 
ordination, illness, and everything that is 
antagonistic to discipline, in fact. The 
mutineers, who have been slinging shot 
about freely before his appearance, lay 
down their arms like lambs, as, in his 
defiant fearlessness after making several 
prisoners, places them in a small outhouse 
leaving one sentry in charge — he draws a 
line with a bit of chalk and dares them to 
pass it alone. Practically he quells a mu- 
tiny that, if unquelled, would have brought 


142 LE beau sabbeub. 

dire disgrace and disaster to the British flag, 
for the young troops are on trial, and their 
sentiments echo in thousands of breasts at 
home in England. A mutiny among them, 
s^uccessfully carried out, would have been 
a bitter blow to the Government. A 
mutiny averted by the force of a single 
man’s power and promptitude should surely 
count as something in that man’s' favor if 
he ever falls upon evil days. 

It is perhaps little to his credit that 
he has done this thing. For to be gallant 
and reckless, prompt and plucky, is only 
to be what he cannot help being him- 
self ! Still the law of compensation works, 
even he allows, when the next day he is 
called out and publicly thanked by the 
Admiral and the General for* his splendid, 
soldierly conduct. Beau’s discomfiture and 
defeat is a degree less hideous to him, 
when he is told that though the matter 
of the mutiny must be kept dark,* and not 
allowed to reach England, he will be rec- 
ommended for promotion. 

“Are you glad? Has Malta begun do 
pall upon you ? ” 


LE BEAU SABREUB. 


143 


Mrs. Ballantyne is the speaker, and her 
questions are a reply to a piece of news he 
has just given her ; namely, that the regi- 
ment is ordered back to England, and that 
they are to be quartered at Plymouth. 

“ Are you glad ? ” he questions in return. 

“Yes, very,” she says frankly. “ Tom is 
tired of it, and we are both pining for a 
country house in one of the western coun- 
ties. I believe when it doesn’t rain, Devon- 
shire is rather nice, isn’t it ?” 

He assures her that Devonshire on dry 
days is very nice indeed. 

“ Captain Lisle is at Plymouth, isn’t he ?” 

Major Forrester nods an assent. 

“ Then probably his sister, the lovely 
Nell, will be there, sometimes staying with 
him. I hope you won’t linger long on the 
brink, but go over like a man and make an 
end of it. ” 

“ You speak in an unknown tongue. ” 

“Do I. You understand the language 
tolerably well; however. I’ll translate for 
your benefit. I meant to say that I hoped 
you wouldn’t hover as an undeclared lover 
around Miss Lisle for long. I would rather 


144 


LE BEAU iiABREUR. 


see the blue ribbon put round your neck, 
and watch you go forth, led by her gentle 
hand an ‘ engaged ’ man at once.” 

“ You’re very kind.” 

“ I really think I am.” Very few women 
would magnanimously fall into position as 
number two after having been number one 
with you for so long a time as I have. There 
was a time when 1 should have been angry 
if you had married. Now I shall only feel 
sorry.” 

“ Why sorry ? ” 

“ Because a man of your type that’s mar- 
ried is a man that’s marred. You’ll have to 
alter, my dear friend, and 1 shan’t like an 
‘ altered ’ Harry Forrester one bit. You’ll 
have to cultivate the virtues of prudence 
and caution and self-restraint, and when 
you have done these things successfully, I 
shudder to think what you’ll be like.” 

“ Don’t commence shuddering yet. 
Miss Lisle may hold your views, and think 
that to marry me would be to mar me.” 

“If 7 were situated with regard to you 
as Miss Lisle is, I probably should hold 
different views,” she says daringly, and he 


LE BEAU SABREUR. 145 

likes her for that daring, though at the 
same time, he feels quite sure that even if 
she were free — now — to-day, he would still 
prefer Nell. 

“ There’s one other thing I want to say 
to you before we part for an indefinite per- 
iod,” she begins, with more hesitation than 
she usually displays in her manner of ad- 
dressing him. 

“ Say it, queen of my soul,” he says 
laughingly. 

“ I won’t even stay to reprove you, that 
would be mere stupid waste of time. 
What I have to say is this : don’t cherish 
the spirit of vendetta against Mr. Macpher- 
son any longer. Let that unlucky incident 
slip into the limbo of forgotten things !” 

“ We’re not likely to come across one 
another again in a hurry. If we do, I 
promise you I won’t stir up strife.” 

“Do more than that,” she says eagerly. 
“Do, do promise me that you won’t let 
yourself be annoyed if he chaffs or jeers 
about it. His wit is rather lumbering. 
Promise me that even if it comes down 

with a dull, heavy thud upon you, that you 
10 


146 


LE BEA U SABEEUR, 


will be discreet and keep your temper. 
I should be so sorry to hear that you had 
got into a row with that man, for so many 
other people would be glad.” 

“I won’t give you any cause for sorrow,” 
he says; and he means what he says at the 
moment. 

They are standing on the deck of the 
Hibernia — where, together with a large 
party, they have been lunching — when this 
conversation takes place, and now they 
are joined by others, and the talk which 
has had a touch of sentiment in it, alters 
its tone, becomes general, and turns upon 
swimming. Some one who is absent is 
quoted as having on one occasion swum 
from the ship “ midway ” to “ Pembroke 
Camp,” an exploit of which both the some- 
one and his friends have ever since been not 
unreasonably proud. Hearing this by- 
gone feat discussed now, Major Forrester 
is seized with a sudden desire to excel it 
and to swim the whole distance, over four 
miles. 

Heavy bets are made at once on and 
against him, Mrs, Ballantyne being one 


LE BEAU 8ABBEUR. 


UT 


of his backers,” of course. As she 
rings out her prophetic opinion that “ he’ll 
do whatever he attempts,” he takes them 
by surprise by springing overboard and 
swimming off, without having gone through 
the ceremony of denuding himself of any- 
thing more than coat and waistcoat. The 
boats are lowered and speedily filled with 
eager groups who are more interested in 
the event as it may determine their own 
losses or gains, than in the strong swimmer. 
They follow him all the way for three 
hours, when he justifies his backers by 
reaching his goal, which is more than four 
miles from the ship which has been his 
starting-point. 

“ Leander is nothing to you,” Laura says 
approvingly as he comes up dripping to be 
congratulated. “ He did it for love,” while 
you— ” 

“Have done it for lucre'' he interrupts 
laughingly. “By the way, they didn’t men- 
tion the name of the fellow they make 
such a fuss about for swimming half the 
distance.” 

“ I heard just now it was Macpherson, 


148 LE beau SABBEUB. 

you can surely forgive and forget about 
‘ Beau ’ now you have scored in a way 
that puts his dubious triumph over you in 
the race completely in the shade.” 

Major Forrester’s eyes deepen and dance 
with delight. 

“ If I had known it was Macpherson’s 
record that I was trying to beat, I would 
have done double the distance,” he says, 
with the easy air which his friends call 
confidence, and his enemies “swagger.” 
“But don’t you delude yourself with the idea 
that I’ve washed out the recollection of the 
shady trick he played me, in the course of 
the swim. I’d forgive the fellow even now 
if he had the pluck to come forward like 
a man and say that in the excitement of 
the moment he pulled across Beau, and 
that Beau in all fairness was the winner. 
But he won’t do that, and until he does 
I shall say what I think of him to his face, 
whenever I meet him, and behind his back 
whenever he is spoken about.” 

“ I hope with all my heart you’il never 
meet him face to face again,” Laura says 
fervently; “if you do, his Scotch caution 


LE BEAU SABREUE. 


149 


will preserve him from indiscretion ; but 
there will be a row, and you’ll be the 
sufferer, and be made to appear the sinner. 
You are always made to appear the sinner, 
you know ! lb’s the way the world has of 
dealing with you.” 

“ Perhaps it’s because I don’t pose as a 
saint.” 

“ Perhaps it is, and perhaps you’re not 
much worse than those who do so pose. 
Still it is pathetic that you are more blamed 
for the things you haven’t done than for 
the things you have.” 

“ While you’re philosophizing. Major For- 
rester is standing in his wet clothes, my 
dear,” Mr. Ballantyne puts in. “ If any one 
observes this incident you will be pro- 
nounced indiscreet, and he an idiot.” 

“ I wouldn’t dispute the latter part of 
the sentence, but I’d go for any one who 
gave utterance to the former,” says the Beau 
Sabreicr ; and for one evil moment Laura lets 
herself long for something to occur which 
may make him proclaim himself her cham- 
pion openly. As she suppresses all expres- 
sion of this feeling, however. Major Forres- 


150 LE BEAU SABMEUB. 

ter has the sensation of one who has offered 
to tilt at windmills, and he allows himself 
to reflect that the cool way in which Mrs. 
Ballantyne absorbs devotion like a sponge 
is not nearly so gratifying as the open man- 
ner in which Nell Lisle shows she is proud 
of it. 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


151 


CHAPTER XI. 

DISMISSED THE SERVICE. 

A LATE Autumn day, heavy mists hang- 
ing over the whole neighborhood, and a 
dispiriting, drizzling rain descending with 
dreary pertinacity, and permeating into 
every nook and corner of the Three Towns. 
The contrast between those blue waters of 
the Mediterranean, and blue skies of the 
South which he had lately left and this 
leaden - skied , muddy - s treeted Plymouth , 
strikes dismally into Major Forrester’s soul, 
as, with Rush on the seat beside him, he 
drives up George Street on his way to that 
“ country beyond ” which he hopes may be 
a trifle less revolting than the town in this 
weather. 

It is market-day, and the streets are 
rather crowded. According to the pleas- 
ing habit of the place, the pedestrians desert 


152 


LE BEAU SABREUR, 


the pavements and drift despondently into 
the streets, and the drivers of nearly every 
class of vehicle persistently take the wrong 
side of the road. If Major Forrester’s guar- 
dian angel is on the alert, he (the angel) 
must have an anxious time of it just now, 
for the Beau Sahreur gives Bell and Beauty 
their heads, and they go with a rush that 
makes the majority of the saunterers in 
George Street stand clear. 

He pulls up at a tobacconist’s to get a 
cigar, and Eush sits for an ill-fated five 
minutes in charge. True, the tiger has 
hold of the leader’s head, but Eush is the 
responsible person, as he sits on the box 
seat, glowering at all the passers-by. 

Unhappily ! ill-fatedly ! one of the pas- 
sers-by happens to be Mr. Macpherson, who 
recognizes Major Forrester’s bull -dog and 
tandem keenly. 

“ There’s a lot of gas in that turn-out,” 
Macpherson says jeeringly to a friend who 
is with him, and who unwittingly adds 
fuel to the fire of Mr. Macpherson’s smould- 
ering ill-feeling by saying : 

“ They’re very good-looking ponies, the 


LB BEAU SABREUB. 


153 


best steppers I’ve ever seen in my life. 
Their hind action is simply splendid.” 

“ I’ve got my eyes on a cob for a wheeler 
who’ll take the shine out of Master For-. 
rester’s team — ” 

“ Can you drive tandem ? — never knew 
it,” the friend puts in unwarily. 

“ I should rather think I can,” Macpher- 
son replies insufferably. As he speaks he 
holds his stick up in a semi-friendly, semi- 
menacing way towards Eush, who perceives 
the menace, but is blind to the friendli- 
ness. In a moment that loyal guardian of 
his absent master’s property is quiveringly 
alert, stiffening himself, shoving out his 
under-jaw, slowly rolling his ferocious vel- 
vet eyes in the direction of Mr. Macpher- 
son’s person, and growling ominously. 

“Come along! don’t irritate the dog,” 
his friend says. But Macpherson is in an 
exasperating mood. Something, — who can 
tell what ? — has gone wrong with him this 
afternoon. He is on shore for the first time 
for several weeks, and the shore has got 
into his usually clear head. Eaising his 
voice for the benefit of all and sundry 


154 LE beau sabbeur. 

who may be passing, as well as for that of 
the man who is standing quietly just inside 
the door, he says as he shakes his stick 
again at Eush : — 

“Be quiet, you brute, you’re as great a 
bully as your master.” 

The words are hardly out of his mouth, 
befor Major Forrester is standing in front 
of him, plunging his hands into his pockets 
in order to keep them off his foe, saying in 
tones that are also unsubdued : 

“You were saying there was a lot of gas 
in this turn-out, and that my dog is as 
great a bully as his master. Did you mean 
me to hear your remarks ? If you did I’ll 
thrash you.” 

“ I meant you to hear them,” the other 
man says, and as he says it he strikes For- 
rester in the face, regardless of the fact of 
the latter’s hands being in his pockets — 
where it is needless to remark they do not- 
remain an instant after that fatal first-blow. 

In a moment the two half-maddened men 
are struggling fiercely together giving blows 
heavy enough to fell an ox, and using lan- 
guage in their fury that raises the tempera- 


LE BEAU SABliEUR. lo5 

ture of the atmosphere around them. When 
they are separated — and those who essay 
to do it feel that they are acting suicidally 
— at last, the whole place rings with the 
news that two officers have fought like 
costermongers in the open street, in broad 
daylight, to the disgrace of their respective 
uniforms. 

Before the sad, dull sun sets this day, • 
Major Forrester is placed under open arrest, 
and the first tidings Nell Lisle has of him 
since his return from Malta is that he is 
to be tried by court-martial “ for scandalous 
conduct and for using language unbecom- 
ming an officer and a gentleman.” 

It has been in vain that friends of the 
offender, — for the majority insist upon it 
that Major Forrester must have been the 
“ offender,” because they say “ Macpher- 
son is such a nice, quiet, steady fellow that 
he couldn’t possibly have been the aggres- 
sor,” — it is in vain that the friends of the 
offender plead that the affair may be 
hushed up, and kept quiet on account of 
his brilliant services, and exceptionally 
splendid service record. Colonel Heath- 


LE beau sabeeue. 

cote has too strong a sense of duty and 
justice to show any mercy to a man who 
has had the audacity to see and speak about 
the humorous side of the gallant Colonel s 
career. The brother officers who like Harry 
Forrester, and the men who adore him and 
regard him as “ their major par excellence ” 
are quickly taught — or at any rate speedily 
learn — that if they desire to tread the path 
of peace in the regiment, they had better 
abstain from showing anything like par- 
tizanship for the man who has been the 
glory of their corps. He has given his 
enemy the Chief that chance which Cap- 
tain Lisle foretold so long ago, and the 
Chief takes it with a vengeance. 

It must be granted that Colonel Heath - 
cote is well within his rights. No one — 
not even an illogical idolater — can deny 
that Major Forrester has sinned against 
service rules, which are almost “ holy,” they 
are so inflexible and severe. He has sinned 
egregiously. He has returned a blow, and 
resented being called a “ bully and a brag- 
gart,” and for “ these things he must suf- 
fer ” in order that discipline may be main- 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


157 


tained in the service which he has done so 
much to glorify. It is made manifest to 
him, even while he is under arrest and be- 
fore the court-martial, that these senti- 
ments animate the breast, and permeate the 
minds of the majority. One or two men in 
the regiment who have hitherto found his 
quarters their pleasant daily lounge, and 
his company the best they can desire, find 
these quarters and this company less attrac- 
tive now. They do not absolutely “ drop 
him,” for there is “ a chance ” that the sen- 
tence of the court- martial may be less severe 
than is feared or hoped by some of them. 
Still an uneasy feeling prevails. It is 
whispered that the charges against him have 
been framed in such a way that the Court 
must find him guilty on one count at least, 
and, if so, — “ he’ll lose a year’s time, prob- 
ably, poor fellow ” — some of the least time- 
serving among his friends say pityingly. 

His enforced seclusion during the two 
dreary months that follow before his doom 
is sealed, is punishment enough for the 
folly of which he has been guilty. To live 
in uniform, with the knowledge that he 


158 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 


must not take it off when he pleases, to sit 
within four walls with the knowledge that 
he cannot go outside them whenever he 
likes, to know that an orderly is tramping 
outside his door for the purpose (theoreti- 
cally) of bayoneting him if he attempts to 
escape ! — surely these things endured for 
many weary weeks are punishment enough 
for a man whose name rings through the 
service as that of a brave soldier, a gallant 
gentleman-, a leader among men ! It is not 
only that he has always done his duty per- 
fectly, daringly, and well ; but |ie has con- 
tinually gone outside the duty lines and 
done such things as mark an epoch in the 
annals of bravery. He has literally held 
his life as nothmg in the service of the 
Queen — as those who were with him at 
“McNeill’s Zareba” can testify. He turned 
the tide at Suakim — but that was “then!” 
This result of a foolish squabble is “now !” 
So, after the manner of the world, all that 
is exceptionally glorious in a man’s career 
is forgotten, all that makes mothers pray 
that their sons may emulate him is blotted 
out, and. Just for a foolish fracas, for his part 


LE BEAU SABBEUR. 159 

in which, it was hoped he would have been 
“reprimanded” only, Major Forrester is 
“ dismissed the service.” 

Meanwhile Mr. Macpherson has been 
tried, found guilty of being a sadly ill-used 
young man in that he, too, has been under 
arrest for some weeks, and sentenced len- 
iently to lose some trifling seniority. The 
impartiality of the respective sentences 
is a crown of glory to the Courts that 
found them, the Grovernment that endorsed 
them, and the country that permits them 
to be carried out. But to Major Forrester 
they spell Ruin. 

No one outside the family circle of a man 
at whom this worst of Fate’s thunder-bolts 
is levelled, can realize the horror and agony 
of it. To know that just for some idle dif- 
ference, just for some foolish intemperate 
word or deed the whole of a previous career, 
however brilliant and noble, however self- 
sacriflcial and gallant is to be blotted out, 
is to enter into Hell upon Earth for the man 
who has erred for a moment, and for those 
to whom he is dear. That the degradation 
which is meted out to the punished man is 


160 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


only his due is assumed at once and for 
ever by the vast majority who never trouble 
their heads to inquire into the merits and 
demerits, the facts and falsities of the case. 
The man who “ gets off” through some flaw 
in the indictment against him, through 
the imbecility of those who fail to accuse 
him with sufficiently damning virulence, 
or through personal influence with those in 
power, is applauded for his ultimate escape 
and his temporary embarrassment. But 
woe unto him against whom the indictment 
is officially “flawless,’’ against whom the 
Act of accusation has been framed with 
merciless veracity, and who has no personal 
influence with those in power. For him 
there is no “ beneflt of a doubt,” no ex- 
tenuating circumstance, no chance ! He is 
looked upon as the Devil’s progeny, and 
sent to his Father with all speed by those 
of his fellow- creatures who have the power 
to do it. 


lE BEAU SABBEUB. 


161 


CHAPTER XIL 

^‘GENTLY SCAN YOUR BROTHER MAN.” 

“ As I always said, give him rope enough 
and he was bound to hang himself, sooner 
or later.” 

The speaker is Colonel Heathcote. The 
scene is Mrs. Ballantyne’s drawing-room, 
in the pretty house she has rented for six 
months in one of Plymouth’s prettiest sub- 
urbs. The time is eight p. m. on the even- 
ing of the day on which Colonel Heath- 
cote has had to perform what he terms 
“the painful duty” of promulgating the 
sentence of the court-martial on Major 
Forrester. 

“ I always said give him rope enough 
and he was sure to hang himself, sooner or 
later,” Colonel Heathcote says authorita- 
tively, as the woman he addresses makes 
no response to his first remark. 

She has been sitting very still for the 
last ten minutes, her hands covering so 


162 


LE BEAti SABREUB. 


mucli of her face as their size will allow. 
This show of interest in and sympathy 
with Major Forrester is the bitterness of 
gall to the man who cannot forgive the 
B-eau Sabreur his successes in love, in war, 
in sport, — in everything, in fact, in which 
Colonel Heathcote would himself like to 
excel and cannot. 

She drops her hands as he repeats his 
quotation of his own former amiable utter- 
ance. There are tears in her eyes, but her 
tones ring out bravely and untremblingly. 

“ You make me wish that the rope was 
round your own neck when you exult over 
the ruin of such a man as Major Forrester. 
Surely now is not the time to recall and 
repeat all the ill-natured, vindictive hopes 
and fears you have been in the habit of 
expressing about him.” 

“ If I had not been your father’s friend, 
and if I had not a very sincere and strong re- 
gard for you, Mrs. Ballantyne, I would — ” 

“Take your leave in a dignified huff, 
and leave rue to my own evil devices ! Is 
that what you wish me to understand you 
would do, if it were not for that legendary 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


163 


friendship for my father which you tell me 
existed ? Ah ! no ! you will never quarrel 
with me — while you think other people 
find me attractive.” 

She speaks with such evident truthful- 
ness, with such unfeigned weariness that it 
is borne in upon him that she means exact- 
ly what she says, and that her estimate of 
the toughness of his devotion to her and 
its motive-power. is a current one. 

“As an old friend — you’ll grant me that 
claim ? — as an old friend, one who knows 
the world and its wicked ways much better 
than you do, let me advise you, beg of you 
to make no display of partisanship for this 
man, who is merely reaping what he has 
sown. The general feeling, I assure you, 
is that the regiment is well rid of him. After 
all, he is merely an exceptionally strong 
fellow, endowed with a ferocious and un- 
governable temper and a love of fighting.” 

“ As the enemies of his country have 
found on innumerable occasions,” she puts 
in incisively. Then, in a sadder tone, she 
asks : 

“ You don’t mean it, you don’t tell me 


164 


LE BEAU 8ABEEUB. 


really that anyone — any man — in the regi- 
ment is glad of this hideous finale ? ” 

“ To be candid, I must tell you that the 
majority are very much resigned to the loss 
of one whom they cannot regard as an 
ornament to the regiment.” 

“ So soon ! This is the most rapid change 
of opinion I ever heard of. Rats leave a 
‘ falling house ’ I know, but I’m sorry to 
learn that there are men who emulate rats 
so successfully.” 

“ You are sarcastic and furious — a wo- 
man, should never be either, my dear Mrs. 
Ballantyne. Believe me, I know more 
about the man’s character than you can 
possibly do. Men have opportunities of 
guaging other men that are denied to a 
woman — ” 

“ Tell me what are these black spots on 
his character with which I am unacquaint- 
ed ? ” she interrupts impatiently. “You 
who know so much more about him than I 
do, you say, tell me. What are the hideous 
ulcers under the fair surface ? Has he ever 
done anything treacherous or timid ? Has 
he ever broken a trust or shown himself a 


LE BEAU SABBEUE. 


165 


coward ? Has he ever slandered man or 
woman ? Has he been those worst of all 
things that a man and soldier can be — • 
either a laggard in love or a dastard in war? 
If he has been one of them, and you prove 
it to me, I’ll give him up — though it will 
break my heart to do so, now when other 
people will be so ready to forsake the 
fallen man.” 

“ I can’t say that he has ever been guilty 
of any of the offences you particularize, — 
they’re not in his line, no one would ever 
dream of accusing him of them,” Colonel 
Heathcote hurriedly admits. “Neverthe- 
less”’ he goes on more deliberately, “ he is 
not the sort of a man I should permit my 
wife to be intimate with, if I had one ; and 
I shall strongly advise Ballantyne to take 
my view of the matter and counsel you 
(in his case the counsel would be a com- 
mand !) to drop him !” 

“Thank you! Fortunately Mr. Ballan- 
tyne is in the habit of judging for himself, 
and of acting on his own judgment, irrespec- 
tive of other people’s opinion.” 

She speaks coolly and suavely, and so 


166 


LE BEAU SABBEUB. 


disappoints her old friend, who has a strong 
desire now to irritate her into saying 
something intemperate or ridiculous on 
behalf of Major Forrester. His next words 
will surely throw her off her balance. 

“ Have you any idea what he is going to 
do now ? He ought to be looking out for 
something at once. ” 

“ He was made acquainted with the fact 
that his whole career was wasted and 
blighted about three o’clock to-day, I 
believe. He’s more or less than man if in 
these few hours he can have given his 
mind to any scheme for the future.” 

“ That fellow Lisle joined him directly 
he came out after the sentence, and invited 
him down to his brother’s place in Norfolk. 
An imprudent thing to do, and one that 
Lisle’s brother won’t thank him for, I 
should think, especially as he was very 
fond of the sister, when he dared aspire to 
her. He’ll hardly dare to do that now, I 
should say.” 

“ God bless the Lisles ! ” Laura says with 
such fervor that again a slight twinge of 
disappointment oppresses her auditor’s 


LE BEAU SAB REUB, 167 

breast. That there is a touch of senti- 
ment in Mrs. Ballantyne’s warm friendship 
for the Beau Sabreur has long been patent 
to the Colonel. (“ Surely now,” bethinks, 
“ she’ll resent his going to Miss Lisle for 
solace, rather than coming to her.”) Aloud 
he says: 

“ I never knew that Captain Lisla and 
you were allies.” 

We are now, if the strong regard we 
both have for Major Forrester, and the 
strong desire we both feel that he may 
find solace, the dear ill-used fellow, in any- 
one so good as Nell Lisle, can make us 
allies.” Then she rises up, crosses to the 
door of a little inner boudoir, opens it and 
cries out : 

“Nell! come here and tell Colonel 
Heathcote that Major Forrester has not 
only dared to aspire to you, but that he 
has had the audacity to win you. Yes I 
those days while he was under arrest 
were very dark ones, but I took care that 
they should be brightened as much as 
possible by the society of a girl who is 
going to make him the best and pluckiest 


j_0g LE BEAU SABBEUR. 

wife that ever a man has had in the worl'd. 
I see you’re too much surprised, Colonel 
Heathcote, to offer her your congratulations 
now, so I’ll spare you to go back to him, 
Nell/’ And Miss Lisle, who is a little flur- 
ried and embarrassed by the consciousness 
that her fiery and impatient lover is in the 
adjoining room, and that at any moment 
he may come in search of her and untow- 
ardly confront the man whose tender mer- 
cies have been her lover’s undoing, — does 
as she is bid, obediently. 

Instantly on this Colonel Heathcote takes 
his leave — feeling neither a better nor a 
wiser man for this revelation of herself 
and her real motives which Mrs. Ballantyne 
has made. (“ I thought her a mere heart- 
less mass of vanity and friskiness, and 
would have sworn that she would either 
give him the eold shoulder now he has 
come to grief, or else elope with him now 
su-ch a proceeding can no longer injure 
him in the service. But that Laura Bal- 
lantyne should stick to him still, and at the 
same time resign him to that girl, astounds 
me ! ”) 


LE BEAU SABUEUR. 169 

Possibly it astounds others besiaes Col- 
onel Heathcote, among them Laura herself, 
who never realized while the sun of suc- 
cess and popularity was shining on him 
that she would have the stamina to be true 
in the highest sense of the word both, to 
him and to herself, should that sun be 
withdrawn. 

So there is balm in Gilead still for the 
man whom unmerciful disaster follows 
fast and followed faster at this epoch. 
Others besides Colonel Heathcote feel that 
Fortune is not going to give Harry For- 
rester nothing but kicks when they hear 
that Miss Lisle intends to link her lot with 
his, whatever that lot may be. That Mrs. 
Ballantyne has relinquished flirting with 
him in order that she may develope into 
the heartiest partisan that a man can have, 
is perhaps also a little perplexing to those 
who have been ready to think evil of her 
and him too — for so long. 

Still though there is some compensation 
for him in these facts, though Nell’s love 
and Laura’s friendship for him are things that 
pass all understanding in their respective 


170 LE beau sabreub. 

ways, his state is still a woefully sorrowful 
one. Out off from the service he loves 
as only a man who is every inch a soldier 
can love it, deprived of the power of going 
to the front as he has invariably done for 
twenty-three years whenever he got the 
remotest chance of doing it, cast out into 
penury, and practically robbed of the power 
of getting other employment ! What Chris- 
tian will be found to give him not only 
advice and censure, but a helping hand at 
this juncture ? Will merciful Majesty bid 
him take up his sword, re-don Her colors, 
and wear and bear both in Her service 
again ? Will Justice and Clemency shake 
hands and reconsider that sentence which 
is condemning him to moral and social 
death and destruction, and restore him to 
that position he is ready to fill so gallantly 
and honorably ? Will the Country let it 
appear that it is resigned to seeing men 
who have served it boldly, brilliantly and 
well, thrust out to consort with Ruin ? 
Will no efforts that must compel recog- 
nition be made by those who have the 
power to get him re-established ? These 


Li^ b^att sabbeub. 


171 


are the burning questions that he and those 
to whom he is dear, and to whom his 
character is an open book, ask themselves 
feverishly as the long dark days roll by, 
resolve themselves into months, and still 
find him and leave him not re-instated yet ! 
“ When a star has shone so brightly, can 
you glory in its fall ? ” may be pertinently 
asked of those who can make this star to 
shine again an’ they please. 

Of those who have not this God-given 
power it may be asked that at least they 
abstain from injuring his cause by utter- 
ing defamatory gossip about Major For- 
rester, which, though it may make a “ pretty 
story ” to enliven the deadliness of an 
“ afternoon tea ” in Plymouth or its neigh- 
borhood, has probably no foundation in 
fact, but is none^ the less ruinous for that. 
To quote some of Burns’ verses, addressed 
“ To the Unco Quid : ” 


Oh ye, who are so guid yoursel, 

Sae pious, and sae holy, 
ieVe nought to do but mark and tell 
Your neighbors^ faults and folly. 


172 


LB BBAV SABttBXTU. 


“ You see your state with theirs compared, 

And shudder at the niffer; 

But cast a moment’s fair regard : 

What made the mighty differ ? 

Discount what scant occasion gave 
That purity you pride in 
And (what’s aft mair than all the lave) 

Your better art of hiding 1 

“ Then gently scg-n j’^our brother-man, . 

Still gentler sister woman, 

Tho’ we may go a kenning wrang, 

To step aside is human ! 

One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving ^ why ’ they do it ; 

And just as lamely can ye mark 
How far perhaps they rue it.” 

Who made the heart, ’tis He alone 
Decidedly can try us — 

He knows each chord — its various tone. 

Each spring — its various bias. 

Then at the balance let’s be mute 
We never can adjust it,— 

What’s done we partly may compute. 

But know not what’s resisted^ 

These words plead with an eloquence 
that I cannot hope to emulate for condo- 
nation of the few faults and frank follies of 
the Beau Sabreur, 


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